Moby Dick (1998)

Pretty Good

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Blistering performances.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I herd that is this a was great story. So I thought it would be a good movie. It is not. 6.5 what a bunch of hype. This is a 4. What an awful story line. And what an awful ending. Moby Dick (1930) is so mush better. Do not see this movie. Great actors wasted there talent being in this movie. Do not see it. It is awful. It is not scary. If you want to see something scary see King Kong (1933). Son of Kong is also very scary. King Kong (1976) is scarier. Do not see this movie. If you like good horror stories you will not like this movie. If you like good movies you not like this movie. Do not see it. It is a awful.

If you felt that John Huston's film of Herman Melville's immortal epic was too old hat for you, I think you'll find what you are looking for in here. stunning photography, stronger acting, and dazzling special effects, Franc Roddam's Moby Dick, is not just one of the greatest TV movies but one of the greatest sea fearing pictures to come out of the last few decades.Moby Dick is one of those novels that everyone talks about but nobody has read. Herman Melville's 19th century New England maritime dialog would be difficult for most contemporary readers, but his story is just as strong in a movie form as it is in a 1000 page book, ergo a viewer could gain the same knowledge and understanding of all the themes, whaling, shipping and most of all human nature.I've never thought of Patrick Stewart as a great actor, but this is the strongest performance I've seen him give. His Captain Ahab is more colorful than Gregory Pecks, sometimes going over the top, but he does a better job of portraying the old captain as a madman Henry Thomas and Ted Levine also give good performances, and even Gregory Peck makes an appearance. Incidentilly this what the last movie he acted in.Even though the original Moby Dick is still impressive today, the special effects are weak and they show scientific inaccuracies regarding the movement of whales. A good balance of CG and animatronic makes Moby Dick in this film, move more elegantly, like a whale rather than a rubber model. Once again the film not only emphasizes the color of the whale but the size. Moby Dick is a Sperm whale, a species which grows to a lenght of about 50 - 55 feet. however this specimen looks closer to 100 feet . There are some great shots which provide a good hint of scale, one of which involves a whaling rowboat being crushed between the giants jawsIf you can find this on DVD or catch it on television, I strongly recommend you see this, it might just blow you out of the water with awe.

This television film is a mix of good intentions and missed opportunities, that results in an acceptable but not brilliant version of Melville's book. Patrick Stewart is fine as Ahab, and gets to deliver some of Melville's best lines wonderfully. Ted Levine is a terrific Starbuck, with a real emotional depth to his performance that is probably the best thing in the movie. The ship looks good, the street scenes and the Spouter Inn, are all well done, and there is a grimy, grungy realism about the look of the clothing and the buildings and everything that makes up the day to day world of Nantucket.The acting generally is good and it's not at all a bad adaptation of a classic.However, it does miss most of the eerie, overwhelming sense of strangeness and mystery of the book. Moby Dick is simply not as majestic and terrifying as he should be, with the sense of awe he inspires in the superstitious seamen. Ahab's mad rage at the whale should be stronger, as well as his hypnotic hold over his crew. The biggest loss in a film that otherwise gives us more of Melville's characters and incidents than any other film adaptation, is the inexplicable omission of Fedallah's spooky prophecies to Captain Ahab. At least the character is included, and he is shown to have some sort of special relationship to Ahab, which is never fully explained in the novel, either. But the dramatic scenes near the end of the book, with Ahab listening to the fatalistic prophecies of Fedallah, concerning the outcome of the hunt for the White Whale, are excluded, and what could have been a truly inspired adaptation becomes a pretty good version, but not the great work it could have been.Overall, a good adaptation worth seeing, but the 1956 John Huston version, though not as detailed, captures more of the awesome, wild tone of the original.

I rented this remake with high expectations.I was disappointed.In four hours, they failed to tell half the story Huston and Bradbury got so perfectly right in the 1956 classic.Huston's classic is a little dated, particularly in terms of special effects that look like the miniatures they in fact are. While the CGI whale in this remake is a refreshingly-convincing manifestation of a 60-foot sperm whale, it's not Moby Dick.This movie is bright and colorful, and the whale's just a whale. The cast doesn't come across as seasoned whalers, it feels like actors playing weekend yachtsmen, thanks in no small part to a script that can't seem to respect the intelligence of its audience.Moby Dick is a dark, slow story of building, brooding menace, which makes the moments of action all the more thrilling and terrifying.This remake captures none of the atmosphere or colorful character or menace of Melville's classic. At its best moments, it's simply re-hashing moments that were were perfected 42 years before.If you want to see Moby Dick, see John Huston's 1956 masterpiece.