Of Mice and Men

Well-mounted and very traditional, Of Mice and Men honorably serves John Steinbeck's classic story of two Depression-era drifters without bringing anything new to it.

It's hard ... to believe Malkovich's shamble and gape, a simian variant on Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man.

Of Mice and Men is a mournful, distantly heard lament for the loss of American innocence.

The great pleasure of this movie is in what performers Sinise and John Malkovich, Ray Walton and others do with it; what director Sinise does with it; and, perhaps most important, what screenwriter Horton Foote does with it.

Happily, director/star/co-producer Gary Sinise has approached it not with the awe of an English professor, but with the practical eye of a craftsman: Here are solid characters, a taut and emotional story, a beginning, a middle and a wrenching end.

I would not have thought I could believe the line about the rabbits one more time, but this movie made me do it, as Lennie asks about the farm they'll own one day, and George says, yes, it will be just as they've imagined it.

Classic-literature-adaptation demureness...but it's impeccably cast and mostly quite faithful. [Blu-ray]

Elegant adaptation of Steinbeck's classic novel.

Superb Steinbeck adaptation that gets at the meat of the tale.

Fine, studied treatment by Gary Sinise and John Malkovich.

Nothing like a couple of acting gods attacking one of the classics.