Release Date: March 21, 2003
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Tom Sizemore, Timothy Olyphant, Damian Lewis, Donnie Wahlberg
Directed by: Lawrence Kasdan
Written by: William Goldman, Lawrence Kasdan
Distributed by: Warner Brothers
MPAA Rating: R (violence, gore, language)
As is the case with most movies adapted from novels, Dreamcatcher (based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name) is a great story in print that got stripped down to the barebones version for the screen. Although the opening establishes the characters well and is almost identical to the novel’s beginning, as the film progresses, Dreamcatcher strays further and further from its literary source and loses most of the book’s spirit. Though the director, Lawrence Kasdan, probably intended King’s themes of friendship, humanity, and heroism to be as intense as they were in the novel, they are in fact severely dampened and underplayed -- which means that although the movie is somewhat entertaining, it’s not as exciting as the book.
Four boys, at their “finest hour,” once saved a kid with Down syndrome from bullies and it changed them in supernatural ways. Twenty-five years later, as men, Beav (Jason Lee), Henry (Thomas Jane), Pete (Timothy Olyphant) and Jonesy (Damian Lewis) reunite for their annual hunting trip in the north woods of Maine where they come across a lost stranger. Soon, using their unusual powers of clairvoyance, they find themselves trying to prevent an invasion of parasitic alien and the slaughtering of hundreds of innocent civilians by a determined U.S. Army colonel named Kurtz (Morgan Freeman).
Lawrence Kasdan, with the exception of 1983’s The Big Chill, is probably more remarkable as a screenwriter than as a director. In the past, he has collaborated with George Lucas on the scripts for two of the Star Wars movies and Raiders of the Lost Ark, so it’s clear that he knows how to tell an exciting story. For Dreamcatcher, Kasdan has enlisted the help of William Goldman, who is far from unfamiliar with adapting Stephen King novels -- he wrote the screenplays for both Misery and Hearts in Atlantis. For this reason, it’s hard to understand why so much of the narrative’s critical material and character development were left out of the screen adaptation.
It’s understandable that the film can’t afford to lose its audience due to extraneous details that would make the film exceedingly long. But I’m talking about a few extra lines of dialogue that could, for instance, build the unstable relationship between Kurtz and his second in command, Underhill (Tom Sizemore), or show the developing humanity of the aliens, or give the audience some insight into Henry’s suicidal nature. These are some of the small but important details that, if they hadn’t been omitted, would have made Dreamcatcher as enjoyable as the novel.
Kasdan makes some other questionable choices as well. Perhaps hesitant to cram too much science fiction into what is, ostensibly, a horror film, the director slights a subplot that involves a civilian uprising against the soldiers, probably because it relies on everyone in the vicinity of the alien crash site having the same telepathy that the four heroes do. The only benefit of this choice is that it makes the friends’ powers more significant, which is understandable considering they are the film’s protagonists.
Likewise, Kasdan again compromises the balance between horror and sci-fi by actually showing the aliens in question. At least one other, more creative director, presented with the same situation, has found a way of delaying, if not avoiding this climactic confrontation between man and alien in order to make the movie more suspenseful -- watch M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs if you want to see what I mean.
As with Hearts in Atlantis, which was carried by Anthony Hopkins’s performance, a lot of the good in this movie is due to a talented veteran actor. Though Morgan Freeman wasn’t who King would’ve cast for the role (in the novel, a passage describing Kurtz names possible actors who would play him in a movie, and Freeman isn’t one of them), the actor plays against type and pulls off the critical role of the villain because he’s one of the industry’s most gifted actors. It’s too bad the part didn’t ask for more from him.
Opposite him, Thomas Jane, who’s only recently begun to make himself known in Hollywood, also seems to go to waste here, but, following a bevy of supporting roles, he proves yet again that he may be in line for a promising career as a top-billed actor. Tom Sizemore physically fits the role of his one-dimensional character, Capt. Owen Underhill, and brings as much life to it as he can -- though any exhaustion on his part must be because he’s continually being cast as somebody else’s right-hand man. And Jason Lee is perfectly chosen as the twitchy, nervous Beav, confidently contributing to his character’s essence and advancing the plot as much as he can in a relatively insignificant role.
Despite some less-than-astute choices in the script and with the characters, Kasdan is a good director. Many of his shots are inventive and there is certainly a memorable death scene that even Alfred Hitchcock would envy (coincidentally in a bathroom). The acting is excellent, despite the excess of talent; the score by James Newton Howard is almost as impressive as his work in Signs; and the elementary form of Stephen King’s story is still engaging. Because of the high production values, Dreamcatcher certainly isn’t the worst Stephen King adaptation you’ll see. But if you’re expecting The Shining or The Shawshank Redemption, keep dreaming.
-- Ed Malinowski (edman_mal_pal@hotmail.com)