ShangLuda Admirable film.

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

hitch-34 Flipped this on, on Acorn--thrilled to see a Du Maurier tale, which is a nice break from the usual dreck...or so I thought. This was, simply and positively AWFUL. I don't know what dream team dreamt this up, but it dragged on, and on, and on. It held no suspense (is there anyone alive who didn't know who the "fiendish culprit" was, in the first third of it?), the characters had as much charisma as a plate of old salmon, and the dialog was beyond comprehension. I'm accustomed to using closed-captioning for everything, so, no: it wasn't the hideously bad accents, nor the dreadful voice-overs (really? In this day and age, that's the best that they could do?), nor the grotesque overacting by every single member of the cast, save the young actor playing Jem Merlyn. It was logy, and there wasn't anything to do to save it.The continuity errors were painful to watch--the mud-drenched heroine's hemline, popping up-down-up-down, as if she walked through a mystical dry-cleaners while slogging from the dreadful Inn to the Moors. The over-reliance, by the DOP on the darkness to set the mood, rather than actual interior shots or, gods forfend, ACTING. It's got that ridiculously dark "modern" feel to it, as if Dark Shadows had sex with some soap opera and out popped a "gritty" movie. YAWN.When I realized that Acorn had stupidly only put 2 of the 3 "episodes" up for viewing, I honestly didn't know whether to be vexed or relieved that I wouldn't have to watch the last third. What's left to know, after the second part, other than slogging through the now non-existent denouement? I hope that the actress (who played Lady Sybil Crawley) certainly didn't leave Downton Abbey for this piece of drivel--her career should, I'd hope, survive, in SPITE of this, but it's no thanks to her acting in this. I watched her "emote" several facial expressions that were incomprehensible to me--and I know the story line. Given how ridiculously over-long this is, they should have been able to provide some character depth, but didn't. It's ironically both too long (by half, mind you) and yet too shallow at the same time.Inexplicably bad. The Seymour version, albeit sort of "Made for Lifetime Movie-ish," and overwrought, is better than this. Better yet, stick with the novel. If you do flip it on, don't say you haven't been warned. I don't know what version the "crackling with tension" reviewer was watching, but maybe he had a battery charger hooked up to his chair and was jolting himself every 5 minutes. THAT would be less torturous than watching this again, or even finishing it.

Dave-J7 The fashion for dark realism seems to have permeated even Historical dramas. I suppose they think it underpins the characters with an Earthy veritas and makes them, and their circumstances, seem more real. It is true that the doings on the Cornish coast were pretty dreadful but to depict it in such uniformly depressing tones leaves no room for the light of moral comparison to shine in. It's as if the Human Condition is depicted as black paint on a black canvas. We're all doomed and there's no point in trying.This is the stuff of Literature, we are tempted to think, but, unfortunately, this dark cynicism has not so much given it a Literary sheen but rather the ambiance of a bucket of mud from a marshy strand, full of ugly little creatures all trying to escape from their dire surroundings. The trouble with being too realistic is that Reality is often dull, dour and boring and so to take this attitude when dramatising an Historical novel is really, to drain the romance, and thus the entertainment, from the history. Dickens and Shakespeare, and more recently Ripper Street, have a sort of parallel historical verity by the action being enhanced by beautiful dialogue and richly drawn characters. This dramatisation of Jamaica Inn, however, seems to have reduced Literary endeavours to incoherent grunts, curses and prosaic railings against the brutality of life. I had to stop myself from wistfully hoping that the grim, marshy landscape would be transformed into the polished cobbles of Westward Ho and that the Inn would have a Shepperton makeover to turn it into a shiny Admiral Benbow complete with picturesque pirates and colourful redcoats but, unfortunately, we were stuck, until the final squalid thrashings, with undifferentiated mud and gloom. Our heroine was failed by the absence of the best traditions of female literary creations, and became, not so much a plucky young lass, but just another creature floundering in the mire of the marshes.So when poor Mary Yellan rode off into the sunset with her mud-coloured horse-thief, we could only shrug with the dire certainty that she was merely riding slap-bang (with a guttural grunt)into the mud-encrusted side of the bucket.

Mouthbox I love Cornwall, I go there all the time, and I have never had any trouble understanding the delightful Cornish accent. So what in God's name is the language they're speaking in BBC1′s new adaptation of Jamaica Inn? I began by turning up the volume, thinking I simply had the TV on too quietly. When I still couldn't catch what most of the cast were trying to say I tried listening on headphones like a language student struggling to revise for a forthcoming aural exam.But however much I concentrated, rewound on TiVo, or adjusted the audio controls I could only manage to pick out about one word in fifty.Most inaccessible of all was the dialogue uttered by Sean Harris, as violent, drink-soaked smuggler Joss.Joss produced a baffling array of mumbles, whispers and grunts, delivered through the upper nasal cavity in a West Country accent so thick it might as well have been first generation Klingon.Even headstrong barmaid Mary – played by Jessica Brown Findlay off Downton Abbey – had trouble understanding the ramblings of her thuggish, inebriated uncle, and pointed out as much on more than one occasion."I don't understand," she said at one point, and Britain breathed a huge sigh of relief that not every viewer in the country had simultaneously gone deaf.Uncle Joss turned out to be a bit of a nineteenth century Basil Fawlty – a reluctant innkeeper who "don't like people staying," and would rather go down to the beach and crush people's heads with his bare hands. He also had a nasty habit of grabbing people around the throat and shoving them up against walls – a style of behaviour that was also reminiscent of Mr Fawlty at his least hospitable.Matthew McNulty was in it, of course. He's in all the BBC costume dramas and probably hasn't had a day off work in about 7 years. Poor old Matthew must be sick to the back teeth of heavily colour-corrected, windswept moors full of clattering stage coaches and women wading up to their knees in muddy bogs. He looks like he could do with a couple of weeks in the Canaries. Maybe his agent needs to learn how to say "no" from time to time.Finally giving up on trying to follow the dialogue, I turned my attentions to Mary's heavy, full length velvet dress. This character's fondness for bog wading at a variety of different depths meant that in every scene the dark stain around the hem of this garment moved up and down, up and down, like the rise and fall of the tidal Thames at Teddington. I eventually found myself trying to guess at which level the watermark would appear next, and I have every intention of turning this pastime into a drinking game while I am watching episode 3 of Jamaica Inn (with the subtitles turned on.)

ginagee61 OK so first things first the sound is a bit dodgy, but persevere because the screen crackles with tension. The writing is good and the filming style doesn't disappoint. It's suitably dark, and no one, not even out our heroine Mary Yellen, looks pretty in that vapid way that some costume dramas enjoy. She's a bit grubby, but still attractive, so she seems more realistic, because she isn't portrayed like Anne of Green Shipwrecks. The locations are treated like another character in the story. The acting is exciting, with huge amounts of magnetism. Each character has an interesting back story that is sometimes hinted at, sometimes explained. The thing I noticed first is that everyone is dirty, their hands, their hair, their clothes, and of they would be. Smuggling is a dirty business, this production lets you see just how dangerous and desperate it is.