I went into Great Expectations with high hopes. The story has always been one of my favorites and I couldn't wait too see what they had done with it. The film is beautiful. It is very rich in color and scope. The cinematography was outstanding and the direction was solid. The acting was brillant all around. Robert De Niro is in the movie only briefly, but brings respect to a role that could be just a flash in the pan for anyone else. Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow are great and Chris Cooper turns in a very subtle but powerful performance as Finn's guardian. The film left me feeling good, what more could you ask for in a movie?

I was not expecting a completely faithful adaptation of Dickens' book, it was made clear that this was a loose adaptation and I was expecting that. On its own terms, it is definitely worth the viewing, but I was a little underwhelmed considering the talent involved.

Great Expectations(1998) is certainly not a bad movie. It looks amazing, with gorgeous scenery and some of the best cinematography I've seen recently. The music is haunting and sweeping, complimenting the film wonderfully. The script has its frothy moments, but also moments of tension and wit. The supporting cast really help to carry the film, especially Anne Bancroft's haunting, deranged Mrs Dinsmoor and Robert DeNiro's caring criminal-type character in the name of Lustig.

However, I wasn't as convinced by the leads. Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow look handsome certainly and their chemistry is okay, but overall I did find Hawke too sensitive and Paltrow too shallow. The story is loose as anticipated but also a rather clichéd poor-to-rich sort of story with some elements of draggy pacing and preachy tone. Alfonso Cuaron's direction was stylish certainly but forgets to give the film much substance and if anybody is looking for any of the basic underlying themes of the book you won't find much here sadly.

All in all, stunning and stylish visually with a great score and supporting cast but the direction I had mixed feelings about, the story is rather clichéd and doesn't have enough substance to make me forgive that and the two leads are unconvincing, in my opinion. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Although Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow are as romantic a pair of lovers as you will find on the current cinema scene, Great Expectations is like all Charles Dickens novels, a plea for social justice in the setting of the time and place they were written. Not to say that the works of Dickens can't be updated as Great Expectations is here, but the whole premise of the novel is sacrificed.

A lot of the framework of the original novel is left intact though the location is now Florida in the late 20th Century instead of Victorian England. Young Finn (Pip) finds an escaped convict Robert DeNiro whom he aids at first against his will.

Later on the rich and eccentric Anne Bancroft sends for him as a playmate companion for her niece Estella. After that good things just keep coming his way and Pip develops some Great Expectations about his prospects.

In the novel our protagonist Pip goes into business, but in this case young Finn now grown up Ethan Hawke becomes a painter and he gets a few unseen boosts up the ladder of success. He and Estella now Gwyneth Paltrow can't seem to live with each other or without each other. She goes for and against Hawke on a whim even at one point marrying someone else.

I don't object to the modernization of a classic, it might inspire some to check out the original article and that certainly is a worthy goal. But even in sacrificing Dickens's concern for social justice to make this a romance, the ending is changed. I think Dickens would most object to the ending in this film which most assuredly is not what Dickens wrote. The ending for Hawke and Paltrow could have been kept within the spirit of the original novel.

Robert DeNiro has now put his own interpretation on three classic movie portrayals of the past, Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear, Richard Widmark in Night And The City, and now Finlay Currie as the escaped convict Magwitch. His part is completely updated to 20th Century America and still it's in the spirit of what Dickens wrote for Magwitch.

This version of Great Expectations is a nice romantic film, but it's not in any way what Charles Dickens was writing about.