LES MISERABLES

• Starring Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, Uma Thurman, Claire Danes.
• Directed by Bille August.
• Rated PG-13, with violence, sexual references; running time 131 minutes
• With 10 as a must-see, this film rates an 8

By Jack Garner
Staff critic

(May 1, 1998) -- Liam Neeson gives a towering performance as Jean Valjean, the hero of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.

And director Bille August gives the epic 19th-century novel, set in France in the early 1800s, a handsome, moving new screen adaptation.

Neeson is rare among his contemporaries with his ability in being able to play classic, larger-than-life roles. He has the large size, roughly chiseled looks and sweeping style to play mythic characters like Oskar Schindler, Michael Collins . . . and Jean Valjean.

Those who skipped literature class will know that Valjean is the subject of several Hollywood films and a smash-hit musical, and he has long been the prototype for victims of legal injustice. He was the first Fugitive.

Valjean is a good man who has made one mistake: the theft of a loaf of bread. He spends his life in flight from an obsessed officer of the law (played well here by Shine Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush).

Redeemed by a priest who befriends him, Valjean spends his life doing good works. He defines morality by his heart and his actions. His policeman antagonist, Javert, defines morality strictly by the law.

In their adaptation, August and writer Rafael Yglesias stress personal integrity and moral dilemmas over Hugo's political subtext: How poverty, despair and injustice beget revolution.

That element hovers over the film's final hour, but is eclipsed by the personal struggles of Valjean and Javert.

Rush portrays Javert as a complex, flawed human being. But he can't match Neeson's charismatic power. More balanced antagonists would have made the moral conflict sharper.

Uma Thurman and Claire Danes are poignant as Fantine and Cosette, the mother and child who change Valjean's life.

But Even though Les Miserables clocks in at a little more than two hours, it seems too compressed. Some characters and incidents feel rushed, and their dramatic impact is diminished.

Hugo's vast novel is, in some ways, the Gone With the Wind of France (though of far greater literary merit). Its many riches deserve more substantial screen time.

Still, the depth of Liam Neeson's performance does much to make up for the abbreviation.