The Great Gatsby Reviews

"The rich are different than you and I" is a lesson that narrator Nick Carraway (Paul Rudd) learns to his dismay. Through his connections to his distant cousin Daisy Buchanan (Mira Sorvino), Nick becomes an interloper in a world of privilege. However, Nick isn't the only outsider enamored of Daisy's social circle. Although she's married to the wealthy, womanizing Tom Buchanan (Martin Donovan), Daisy fondly recalls a wartime fling with the dashing yet mysterious Jake Gatsby (Toby Stephens). Born Jake Gatz, Gatsby has reinvented himself to disguise the illegal source of his nouveau riche lifestyle: Bootlegging. Having looked the other way when Tom dallied with Myrtle Wilson (Heather Goldenhersh), his mechanic's wife, coquettish Daisy welcomes Gatsby's advances. As he grows more sympathetic to Gatsby, who's spent a fortune buying his way into Daisy's rarefied universe, Nick becomes aware of the Buchanans' habit of discarding people. Smitten with Daisy's friend, Jordan (Francie Swift), Nick recoils from his new flame when he notices the same cavalier streak in her. After Daisy kills Myrtle in a hit-and-run accident, Gatsby gallantly takes the blame. When Myrtle's grief-stricken husband comes seeking retribution, Tom points him in Gatsby's direction. As always, this shallow but privileged Long Island couple lets other people clean up their messes. This robust and generally well-acted adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece makes the novel's subtle themes more readily accessible than the lackluster 1974 version — itself a remake of the 1949 Alan Ladd vehicle — starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. What the writing and direction lack in delicacy, they compensate for with clarity. Although short shrift is given to Nick's infatuation with Jordan, which prefigures Daisy's more significant betrayal, the screenplay harmoniously hits most of the novel's key notes. If it doesn't quite capture the champagne fizz of the Jazz Age, it does evince the timeless talent that the wealthy have for looking the other way.