But things had to go, and rather than treat them badly, I have no resentment for what they left out. The movie does concentrate on some important things however, and for awhile, does it well. We see the often cruel treatment upperclassmen give underclassmen, and can see the reasoning why this seems to be necessary. It is the overriding theme of the book, and shows the givers and takers of the harrassment very well.

It also does tackle one of the important subplots, which is the treatment of the first black recruit to the academy. The way the recruit was treated is shown in all of it's frightening detail. David Keith, as the assigned mentor to the recruit, does his job perfectly here by not showing too much sympathy.

But then it all crashes down by trying to come up with a clean, Hollywood, more upbeat ending. The worst sin is the handling of the Pignatello character to make it much less tragic. To leave out what happens after the court martial is to take away one of the dramatic points of the story. With that said, the ending was also much too neat. The way it is handled fails to illustrate the parallel love-hate relationship the main character has with the academy.

This was far too personal a story to be glossed over like this, and I wish Pat Conroy had had more pull to get it done right. He should have chosen the Larry McMurtry route and got the story filmed as a mini-series.

Disappointing adaptation (Rating: 2.00)
Review : While I admit that no movie adaptation has ever lived up to the novel it was based on, this movie fails worse than normal. If you are a fan of the book by Pat Conroy I strongly urge you to not see this movie. The ending has been changed beyond recognition and the only storyline from the novel that is used is the Will-Pearce story. The movie was ok within adaptation limitations until the end when it fell apart completely.

Saw the movie, THEN read the book (Rating: 4.00)
Review : I saw the movie before I read the book. This is a typical adaptation of a long novel. Yes, the novel was better, but the novel was DIFFERENT! A similar situation occurs with The Caine Mutiny as well as The Godfather. Written stories allow you to explore aspects of character and situation that just can't be effectively portrayed in film. In film, you can't have the character's thoughts effectively presented. The film concentrated on the relationship between Will and Pearce, while the book actually had two plots-Will and Pearce and Will and Annie Kate. Instead of comparing book and film, treat each as seperate entities and enjoy them independently. In this case, the movie was enjoyable.