Customer Reviews

Tai-Pan

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

This film is a greatly condensed telling of Clavell's novel Tai Pan. As such, it necessarily leaves out a great deal of the detail and many of the sub-plots contained in the excellent novel. This was unavoidable because the novel is intricate and complex. I am not sure that even a mini-series would have successfully encompassed the scope of the novel.

With that caveat, I enjoyed this film a lot more than I thought I would. The acting is generally quite good, and the story, while truncated, is coherent and interesting. This is the story of the birth of Hong Kong as an improbable British colony and outpost on Chinese soil. It is further the story of the rivalry between two great British trading houses: Noble House, and Brock & Sons. The latter conflict, which is more or less a bitter clan feud between two Scottish families, is well-told and interesting, and not too far off-track from the story told in the novel.

Within its necessary limitations, I thought that this was a pretty good film, well worth watching.

Admittedly, this is much less of a movie than Tai-Pan is of a book. But the book is a giant among books, and the show is still a good show. Those who have read the book, rather than savaging it for its divergence from the book (which, in any case, would require a mini-series to do its layering and complexity justice, not a 2-hour show) should treat it as a kind of visual accompaniment to the story - good casting, good handling of some powerful scenes. Alright, they were much more powerful in the book, but it's not all the time that readers of a splendid book get the opportunity to see a capable visual incarnation that does justice to the characters, at least, if not to the plot. Maybe if the show had been titled "Selected Scenes from Tai-Pan" rather than "Tai-Pan" it would have been better received by purists.

What I'm trying to say is it did treat the subject material well, although obviously it couldn't pack everything which makes us love the book into just two hours. In an adaptation of a book, when you can recognise each character instantly before the character's name is mentioned it's always a good sign - where there's good casting, it's a sign that it's a sensitive adaptation, and this was the case with Tai-Pan. I thought Bryan Brown was very good as Dirk Struan; I'm not Scottish, so I couldn't tell that his accent was as fake as many others seem to think it.

I can see how those who haven't read the book would find it laughable, though, because due to the compression of the plot you don't really get to know the characters and understand their motivations from scratch. Some of Clavell's magnificent dialogue from the book might sound weird in the show, or lacking in punch, for those without a prior acquaintance of the book, because of this lack of emotional set-up. That's why I think it's best for those who have read the book, who already know the characters and can watch them fully-fledged, so to speak, as the show doesn't spend time introducing the audience to the characters.

Perhaps the reason that fans of James Clavell's books are so vociferous in their criticism of this show, sometimes, is because they are acclimatised to splendid, detailed and heartfelt adaptations of so many of his other books - the Shogun mini-series, the Noble House mini-series and the King Rat film. Why, Clavell fans are really so fortunate already when it comes to screen adaptations! :) If we lowered our expectations a little, we'd see that Tai-Pan, too, is not that bad a treatment of the book at all!

Tai-Pan DVD


Tai-Pan is based on James Clavell's novel. It is a saga of 19th century Hong Kong and a noble hero (Bryan Brown), a dastardly villain (John Stanton) and a woman, of course

Recommended for James Cavell's fans (but the book TaiPan is better IMHO) and fans of early Hong Kong.

Gunner February, 2008

For the small price, I wasn't expecting much. I was happily surprised with a wonderful cast of characters and a beautifully created screenplay which nicely captures the essence of the novel Tai-Pan. If you enjoyed the book, I recommend picking up the video. It's definitely worth watching. The acting may not be the best, but it really does do justice to the story.

I am a big Clavell fan who never got to see the Tai-Pan movie, so I ordered the tape.

To appreciate this movie at all you must have read the book because too much has been left out to preserve the 2-hour time limit for major theatrical releases.

The acting is good. The casting is OK. (May-May is a babe.) However, it is just too scattered to be a coherent piece of work.

Those of you who have read Shogun and then seen the full version of the mini-series and later the 2-hour version can get an idea of what Tai-Pan is like.

The full version of Shogun wasn't perfect (especially because it had to be censored for TV) but was basically good.

The 2-hour version of Shogun was almost impossible to follow, even after having read the book and having seen the full version of the mini-series.

I do have to admit that Clavell fans will be disappointed, but I still recommend that you watch it. For those of you who haven't read the book, I think you should pass.

If you haven't read the book don't even think about watching this movie. If you have read the book be prepared to be disappointed.

Bryan Brown was terrible as Dirk Straun (and I don't mean just the accent), can anyone who read the book picture Kyra Sedgwick as "Hag" Straun (not even close), Janine Turner is wasted as Shevaun (did she say three sentences in the whole movie?), and Captain Orlov is straight out of comic book central casting, just to name a few atrocities!

The telling of the story is incomprehensible, the viewer never picking up -- let alone understanding -- the interplay between the characters or the motivation behind their actions (not even close). As with other Clavell novels, there is just too much going on behind the scenes to capture it all in a 120 minute movie. I would love to see the story told as Tolkien's Lord of Rings trilogy was told, three - three hour movies. Maybe someone can tempt Peter Jackson into tackling this as one of his major undertakings. One can hope!

Having read the book, I wanted to see the movie no matter how bad it was. It was interesting to watch, but not because the story was captivating... The story was a little dry after reading the excellent book with all of its characters, scenes, plots and sub-plots.

I enjoyed watching to see what the writers would include and exclude. How much of the book can you chop away and still get the general story across? Well, quite a bit! They butchered the daylights out of the story. And, in order to make things work, they would often have the same events take place, but in a different sequence and by different people.

Because they chopped so much out, including sub-plots and complex character motivations, scenes that had a lot of internal conflict in the book were very shallow and meaningless in the movie. Where Clavell would bring several sub-plots to a head in a "scene" of the book, the movie would only bring the one sub-plot that survived the cut. It would then add something that wasn't in the book to make the scene more interesting... and to justify it's existence. So it's worse than an abridged version of the book. If you saw the movie first, you probably wondered what all the fuss was about the book.

I would LOVE to see a mini-series like Shogun... Then we could see more and better developed characters, more of the sub-plots, more of the actual story!

I just saw the movie for the first time from HBO. I figured this had to be like the cut down version they sold of Shogun for a while. But what I'm reading here it apparently isn't. I agree completely that they really short changed this movie by cutting it up like this. You can tell there had to be more because the movie jumped from place to place without much flow. I would really like to see a version that I believe was originally a mini series. I'm pretty sure I give it a 5 star rating then. It had so much going for it much like Shogun. I hope someone decides to restore the original as part of a set from Shogun to King Rat.

I'm amazed that Joan Chen didn't make it bigger. She's really damn good, and very pretty to boot...

After reading the book I was extremely disappointed by this poor attempt. I had the 'bad joss' of actually buying the dvd after reading the book. If you hadn't read the book the film would be truly incomprehensible, and if you read the book you would feel a tremendous void. As many other reviewers have said, Taipan needs to be reincarnated as a mini-series of some sort to afford it proper treatment.

Tai Pan is more than a chick flick or criticzing of Bryan Brown. It is a prelude to a very good mini series: Noble house! If you haven't seen Noble House you have missed an excellent journey thru banking & financing in the power people. P. Brosnan is the supreme smooth talker. Lots of intrigue & dirty tricks. If you haven't seen this one order it from Amazon!!