ShangLuda Admirable film.

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

jarrodmcdonald-1 Many of Ernest Hemingway's stories have been transferred to film. Some of them have been very successful and deserve to be called classics. This is not one of those productions, however.It all started when someone thought Hemingway's book would make a great film. It probably could. But for now the best-laid plans have been set aside for a lack of action and excessive voice-over narration. Thirty-minutes into this belabored affair, one scratches his head and asks: why are the producers paying Spencer Tracy to read us the entire book, when he is a skilled performer and should be able to act it out? This story deserves more than a stationary old man in a boat submerged in an artificially painted sea.

lenavaughan Guess who's coming to dinner,,,,,,,if that one put a lump in your throat, this one will, too. The fisherman's love of the sea, his love for "the boy" and his desire to keep doing what he has always done. Harder at his age, but still his joy. I think we see an old soul in "the boy" and a lost art in Spencer Tracy.His time on the sea, alone, was so beautiful and his determination should make us all feel a little wimpy for complaining that minor aches and pains keep us, at times, from our appointed duties. His love for his craft does not lessen with his age or abilities. Every young reader should be required to read Hemingway...especially this one. Every old reader should read it again............or just watch this film It is very true to the spirit of the novel.

Armand the Hemingway novel. as seed for a great film. more than an adaptation, it is a impressive parable about hope, fight, desire and limits. each scene - as perfect circle. the fight against sharks scene - memorable. one of the most powerful roles of Tracy. and beautiful nuances of an extraordinary performance.the beauty of images and precise script are keys of this remarkable movie. a parable - movie because it can be a Christian story about faith and will of God. about ambition and sense of a bitter lesson. about yourself. a fisherman in his boat. a huge fish. and the return to home. all - in powerful light and heavy shadows. parts of a movie about small life things.

Robert J. Maxwell Spencer Tracy is Santiago, an old impoverished Cuban fisherman who has had eighty-four days of bad luck and is being helped to survive by a young boy of the village. Tracy takes his little fishing boat farther out than usual, lands a giant marlin after a fierce three-day struggle, and then loses his trophy to the sharks who tear the great fish to pieces, leaving only the head, spine, and tail.If it get off to something of a slow start, it nevertheless involves us in Tracy's fate all the way. There are lyrical interludes while Tracy watches the birds, the flying fish, the porpoises, and dreams of lions on the African shore. He follows the baseball in the newspapers and admires Joe DiMaggio.And the battles are monumental. Tracy has to fight the huge marlin, then the multitude of sharks that attack it, and -- constantly -- his own age and fatigue. The viewer gets to feel the desperation behind all of these contests. Tracy pulls it off with the help of Dmitri Tiomkin's somewhat bombastic score, with its echoes of "Rio Bravo" and "High Noon." There are three problems though. First, modern viewers have been spoiled by recent advances in special effects and process work. The marlin, seen up close, looks like the rubber bladder it is, even when disguised by the blurry image representing Tracy's dizziness. After it's been stripped by the sharks, the spine looks like a lead pipe bought at the local plumber's, with a few plastic ribs attached. The scenes of the marlin leaping out of the sea aren't well integrated with the studio footage.Second -- and let's face facts -- Big Ernie doesn't translate well to the screen. His bare-bones attempts at thought-provoking folk poetry come across as stilted and sometimes risible.Tracy (to himself): "Do not blame the hand. It is not the hand's fault." (To his cramped hand): "You have been a long time with the fish." Third, there is a problem with the casting. Harry Bellaver is a pug, or a cop, or a reporter in Hollywood movies. He is not a Cuban bartender; he is not strong and has no aficion. Most of all, there is a problem with Spencer Tracy, an actor whom I deeply admire. Even my crude Irish stepfather from Charlestown who never had a sensitive thought in his life, was once moved to say, "Y'know, he's a good-lookin' guy. I don't mean handsome, but manly." But Tracy is not a poor Cuban fisherman. Ernie himself said Tracy "looks like a fat, rich actor." He didn't care for the boy either, who looked like "a cross between a tadpole and Anita Loos." I'm certain I've read somewhere that Hemingway was among the spectators at the arm wrestling contest flashback but I'm not sure it's true.Despite these deficiencies, the author, the cast and crew pull it off. Hemingway had Hispanic fatalism down pat. In the face of what we would call bad luck, they become Stoics. That Olympian generalization isn't mine. A Latin American professor devoted an entire lecture to it. It's a moving and tragic story touching on Hemingway's familiar themes of pride and defeat. As Hemingway has the fisherman say, "You can destroy a man but you can not defeat him," to which I'm tempted to reply, "Like hell, you can't."