'tis quite common for movie adaptations of literary material to be very different from their original inspirations, but why was this big best seller changed so drastically? It's exactly as one of the authors of USERS COMMENTS puts it: did anybody related to this movie ever READ THE BOOK?
God is subtle, but He is not malicious. (Albert Einstein)
Because it's Hollywood. I can think of worse examples!
shareI read the book and did not see the movie. The cast put me off.
Melanie Griffith's character was supposed to be a 'foxy brunette' (she is neither), Bruce Willis's character was supposed to be a tall, blond Englishman (ditto). We won't go into Morgan Freeman as a Jewish judge and I thought Hanks was too young for his character. I read at the time that the producer cast some of the people for past favors.
Oh well, every actor cast as Davey Crockett or Kit Carson was about a foot taller than the real person, every actor cast as Wild Bill Hickok was about twenty years older than what Hickok was when he was murdered in his late thirties. I hoped Hollywood had moved on from the fifties.
I made the mistake of seeing the movie and also could not believe the terrible casting. What was the deal with the renaming of Lawrence Kramer to Jed Kramer too? The Morgan Freeman character was changed beyond the point of recognition. And Willis as Peter Fallow? Good Grief, at lease cast a British actor in the role. The original character in the book was a Brit who disliked Americans and was contemptuous of them and that made him the perfect person to leak information to.
Just plain bad movie.