ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

BallWubba Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Son-of-WRA I'm a rarity in this world. Smart enough to be called intellectual, well-read enough to be called academic, utile enough to be called blue-collar, and pragmatic enough to be called down-to-earth. That means I have little tolerance for the extreme's of that always-in-flux spectrum of human personality. I've been exposed to many worlds in my 54 years, so I've earned the perspective.We rented this series because of the time period and England does produce some of the best movies and mini-series' I have ever seen. For a production that is 27 years old, it stands with some of the best WW2-era stories out there.The actors were very good and believable, no mailing-it-in-performances. I felt like I was in Rumania, Greece, Egypt and all points between. But my admiration ends there. Perhaps that is due to good writing and acting, but there were but a few characters I actually liked. Charles Kay as Dobson and Rupert Graves as Simon Boulderstone embodied the better personalities amongst a collection of self-absorbed, self-indulgent, anarchistic anti-authoritarians.The well-to-do in the world and in fiction both strike me as remote and detached. An air of high-mindedness doesn't fit some people well and thanks go to Mother Nature for the back-handed lessons taught as a result of arrogance. Even so, the haughtiness of the Victorian Age is still loud and clear among these characters despite being set in a different time.

SimonJack Some of those who have commented on "Fortunes of War," have mentioned a 3-hour movie. I just watched a DVD of the 7-part BBC TV mini-series. It runs a little more than 6 ½ hours. At the time of this review, only eight others had reviewed the film, and only 380 had rated it. The high rating (8.1 at this time), means to me that it must rank up there with great works put on film by such English authors as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte or George Eliot. But such clearly is not the case.I enjoy most of the pre-war British movies that I have seen. Various films give one a sense of history of the time in the decade leading up to WWII. A number of very good movies give a picture of the life among the civilians in England and elsewhere, especially in the last few years before war and then in the outbreak of war in Europe. We hear and see the concerns and worries, uncertainty from news reports, fear for loved ones, hope against despair, and British resolve. So, I was anticipating something along those lines in "Fortunes of War." But, we don't get much of that. Instead we are taken along the "adventures" of a recently married English couple in their moves to three locations in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. They are civilians, associated with an institute that teaches English language and culture in other countries. The series/film is based on six novels of fiction by Olivia Manning, who used her travel and living experiences with her husband who worked for the BBC. I'm not familiar with Manning's works, so I don't know how true to the books the mini-series is. But the film series has only smatterings of war engagements, one of which spends time with a young British soldier who is wounded in Egypt. And, otherwise, there seems to be a mix of concern about war or Nazi Germany among the characters. The film gives far too much time to frivolous matters and somewhat to characters whose parts are frivolous as well. We don't see much depth of character development of these people. These give way invariably to a local adventure for the heroine or a task for the hero. So, we get doses as well of scenery, monuments and antiquity in Greece and Egypt. Interwoven with these, are the personal stories – but just superficially for most of the characters. Not all, but most. The series has all the trappings of a soap opera. Indeed, the description of Manning's first three novels in an Encyclopedia Britannica article reads like the formula outline for a "soaper." Then, toss in considerable doses of travelogue, with an occasional accident or mishap, and you have a film that's a hodgepodge. I give "Fortunes" six stars for the good scenery shots and for the good acting by the entire cast. Ronald Pickup and Diana Hardcastle give top performances. But, the poor script has just an occasional shot of quality. So, the acting and scenery can't lift the listless plot above the level of a good soap opera. "Fortunes of War" can be entertaining, in small doses at a time. But only if one doesn't mind a mixed bag of soap opera and travelogue, with fantasy characters and a very slow script. It can't possibly stand up to the great books put on film from Dickens, Austen, Bronte or the likes.

citizenbeta A big novel's length is always a challenge to a film adaptation of the work. When six novels are involved, as is the case here (from Olivia Manning's The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy), the task of adapting the work means most of it gets left behind. How to produce a script that retains some of the novel's uniqueness and flavor but is still coherent to viewers unfamiliar with the novel? Various solutions come to mind. For example, Volker Schlöndorff wisely bit off only the first third of Günter Grass's masterpiece, The Tin Drum, and created a film that at times exceeds its source material in power and impact. And against all odds, the young Ray Bradbury managed to extract key scenes and language from Moby Dick to come up with a script which, when coupled with a decent director (John Huston) and good casting choices (I'm thinking here of Orson Welles as Father Mapple), made a pretty decent movie.Sadly, with Fortunes of War, casting works against the film. Where Guy Pringle is a big bear of a man in the novels, Branagh's sensitive Guy just isn't the same character. And where Harriet Pringle is a small and at times frail woman in the novels, Thompson's Harriet is, well, Emma Thompson. This is not a small matter. The novels' point of view is that of Harriet and what we get there is a detailed, personal, even intimate view of the Pringles' marriage. If you read these novels all in a rush, you almost become Harriet Pringle for a time, immersed in the details of her marriage, seeing the world through her eyes. There's a toughness to Harriet, but also vulnerability, something that Guy often misses as he plunges into one project after another. Little of this comes through in the film.Of course something will get lost in the translation from the literary to the filmic – this is a challenge all film adaptations have to face. But in this film, the mismatch of the lead actors and the characters they play is simply too much to overcome.

berrin This is a very long, but also very enjoyable movie (originally a tv series) set against the background of WWII. Guy Pringle (Branagh), a university professor, leaves Britain and comes to Romania to teach. He has a love for his wife (Thompson) and all the people surrounding them. We watch his passion to make a difference when other people are escaping from Germans marching toward their city and gain influence from within. Relationships develop between the couple and locals, and we start to care about most of them. We see how horrible everyday life could be with the constant threat of war, but how it isn't. We observe Guy treat everyone around him with good intentions, at the expense of his wife, and we want to shake him to come to his senses. We follow their journey to other countries, and the movie is a joy to watch from beginning to end. There are a few memorable scenes between Guy and his wife that I cannot forget, and Branagh really touches me when he cries. The acting by all the cast is simply wonderful, and the movie is definitely worth spending 3 hours.