Les Miserables 12 134mins Dir Billie August.

HOW do you bring one of the great stories to the big screen? director Billie August must have asked at the beginning of this project.

Ignore half of it, pepper it with Hollywoodisms and change the ending; came the reply, crashing into his head like a bull in a French literature shop, or something.

To be fair, even the West End musical adaptation skimps on the plot a little; after all this was written by Victor Hugo at a time when literature loved to be so indulgent that War and Peace seemed like a light read. But change the end (I won't say how) and you change the whole emphasis. The whole complex story evolves from the end backwards, really. If it is leading up to something else, then you have to ask what the point is.

So forget the source text and the other adaptations. How does Les Miserables stand up on its own as a movie?

Well, it just about gets away with being interesting.

Liam Neeson is well cast as Jean Valjean, a man who ends 20 years hard labour (served for stealing bread while starving) with nothing. He repays a clergyman's kindness by stealing off him but is then surprised when the clergyman's forgiveness saves him from going straight back in the slammer. He sees this as a sign of redemption and devotes the rest of his life to goodness.

You'd need a day and a Freetime as thick as the Sunday Times for me to fill in the rest of the plot, suffice it to say when Mayor Valjean meets the town's new police inspector Javert (Geoffrey Rush) he is horrified to discover he was a prison guard when Valjean was serving time. Will his new identity be discovered, will he be able to bring up prostitute's daughter Cosette (Claire Danes) in peace, or will revolution make things too difficult for him?

Neeson broods all the time he is on screen. There is a real feeling that here is a once ruthless man who has come good. It's a powerful performance that generates a real sense of empathy with this man trying to make good.

Rush is severe as Javert. It's a difficult balance, a just man who plays by the rules but who is cast as the bad guy. Again there is empathy for this son of a criminal and whore who is every inch Valjean's nemesis. It's the dynamics between these two that spark this story into life and that hasn't been lost in this translation.

Neither has Valjean's relationship with the whore he sacked from his factory (delicately played by Uma Thurman) or Cosette's relationship with dashing revolutionary Marius (Brit actor Hans Matheson).

And yet. And yet, despite all the relevant relationships working, knowing what lies beneath and not seeing it translated hurts the whole thing a little too much. Purists will hate it, film fans will be moved.

But answer me this, why does everyone speak with an English accent, even the America actors? And why, when Valjean is trying to read, does he use the English spellings of words? Grates like cheese. Jeremy Austin

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.