Victory (1996) User Reviews

"We are the world, Mr Heyst, come to pay you a visit."

[cliveowensucks · 7/10 · 21 July 2004]

I love Joseph Conrad but the films never seem to work. "The Duellists" was too thin, "The Secret Agent" terrible. "Lord Jim"s the best of a bad bunch so far.

This doesn't up the score much, but it's an honest try. The locations are good and it has the feel of the time and place. Casting is arse over face, with pudgy Sam Neill as the novel's skeletal Mr Jones (hammy, mannered, ineffective) and Willem Dafoe as the novel's pudgy Heyst (very good indeed). Irene Jacob's a blank sheet, but at least she's better here than in "U.S. Marshalls." Best of the bunch is Rufus Sewell, who has Jones' 'private secretary' to perfection, and he's an actor I've no time for in anything else.

Biggest drawback is the narration. Bill Patterson may be great, but he barely keeps his trap shut for more than two minutes. He's always telling us back story, what Heyst thinks, what Schomberg thinks. It's as if Mark Peploe can't let go of the novel or as if the producers didn't think the audience would get it. Considering it sat on the shelf for years, probably the last.

The end is under effective because you never get any feel that the lovers bring each other to life. Dafoe does well, but Jacob is like Isabelle Adjani at her weakest here, doing too little. Good stuff along the way, and Neill does redeem himself with the great line "We are the world, Mr Heyst, come to pay you a visit." Now that's Conrad.

Good story succumbs to mediocre execution

[=G= · 6/10 · 21 November 2002]

In the early 1900's in Sourabaya, Java, a man (Dafoe) rescues a beautiful violinist (Jacob) from indentured servitude, taking her to his desolate island home while being followed by larceny, treachery, and madness. "Victory" is a middle-of-the-marquee film which takes on the challenging elements of love, intrigue, suspense, betrayal, murder, etc. in an exotic location shoot but, in spite of good work from a good cast, never seems to be all it could have been. Hampered by ordinary cinematography, a superficial melodramatic execution, and less than sterling direction, "Victory", appears destined to die a slow death among the cable channels. (C+)

Good actors; Poor screenplay and directing

[lithium6 · 5/10 · 12 March 2004]

This could have been something really fine. Dafoe, Jacob, and Neil are wasted.

The script seems like a half-hearted attempt to "do" a Joseph Conrad. The director seems lost. Odd, considering he wrote the screenplay--somehow, you would have expected more. It feels more like a project for his resume.

Read the book instead--it's wonderful.

This seems to have been a European-financed project. I don't remember hearing of it back in 1995. Was it even released in North America? I discovered it through an IMDB search.

very good.

[adelmastrosmith · 21 January 2004]

What I liked the most about this movie is that it was subtle. Nothing was pushed too far, the realistic acting and minimal melodrama made this movie very plausible, watchable and actually made you more in tune to the story, setting and characters in their feelings, where as some movies pour it on too much.

Great Book, Weak Film

[richlandwoman · 6/10 · 18 October 2003]

Victory is one of my favorite books. Victory is not one of my favorite movies. The film sticks pretty close to the original plot, but all the feeling is lost. In the novel, the relationship between Lena and Heyst is heartbreaking. In the film, it's just another bland romance.

Also, Mr. Jones in the book is an extremely thin, spectral character, while Axel Heyst is a solid businessman. So, to me the casting of Dafoe as Heyst and Neill as Jones is completely backwards.

This isn't a horrible picture by any means, but it could have easily been far better.

6/10

What??? Speak up!

[onairbob · 6/10 · 4 January 2003]

The film starts off with a hint of sultry islands and sultry nights in the South Seas and I was planning on liking it, but about one third of the way through most of the characters became unintelligible. If I could only make out what they said, it might have been a good movie. I ran the volume all the way up and all I got was British mumbles even when I rolled the tape back to try to catch what they were saying.

Pretty weak screenplay ...................

[merklekranz · 4/10 · 16 June 2010]

I hope the book reads better than this film plays, because the screenplay seems pretty weak. Willem Dafoe in a restrained performance, would be the only reason to endure 99 tedious minutes of this. While the 1913 period south seas locations are reproduced satisfactorily, the constant narration and wooden performances sink it. There is some nice tropical island scenery, but the entire cat and mouse game played by Dafoe, Sam Neill, Rufus Sewell, and Irene Jacob, is never believable. Very talky at times, everything just sort of drifts along to an extremely underwhelming conclusion. Very forgettable, and not recommended, even for Willem Dafoe fans. - MERK

Strangely forgotten, ambitious film

[mcnpauls · 8/10 · 31 May 2009]

My wife and I finally got around to watching this R1 purchase we made a couple of years back of an ambitious film that sank without trace in both cinemas and on DVD.

Has anyone seen it? It really is worth seeking out. My better half thought it was excellent, and while I'm just too much of a fan of Conrad in general and this novel in particular to share her view, I definitely enjoyed it.

Willem Dafoe and Irene Jacob are actors who always leave me cold, but Sam Neill and Rufus Sewell (whom I cannot abide normally) are both great as the villains. The production detail is flawless in conveying Indonesia just before the First World War, and the scenery and photography is beautiful. particularly effective is the island where Dafoe's character lives as a recluse with its tropical villa and abandoned wharf and coal mine. The score, too, is very strong.

There's rather too much narration (from the always excellent Bill Paterson, though) and Simon Callow gives a performance that is hammy even by his standards, but, mercifully, is hardly in it.

Richard Lester and Harold Pinter were developing a version of this in the 1980s, which was never made.

a really limp love story

[practicallyperfect50 · 1/10 · 21 October 2015]

At no time in this film was there any depth of emotion expressed. That lack of feeling made it dreary to watch the story unfolding and becoming more and more boring instead of more and more interesting. The score was something out of the banality of several Hallmark movies and the way Peploe shot Irene Jacobs playing the violin was like somebody from the student newspaper was given a video camera for the first time. The terrific actors who were cast in this limp love story ( Conrad is repulsed by this movie version of his splendid novel, he shouts from the grave)have found their all time low. Lastly the editing was so jerky and dumb at times that I wondered if it was chopped up like that by an angry producer who could see he would never get a good return on his investment.

Excellent Conrad story!

[yossarian100 · 10/10 · 10 December 2003]

Victory is storytelling at its finest and a seriously good screen adaptation of a great Joseph Conrad story, one of the best storytellers of modern times. Excellent performances by Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill, Irene Jacob, and Rufus Sewell but here the success of this film is the story itself and a director who understands and respects the material. No one could build a tale around a personality flaw better than Conrad and the characters he created are wonderfully mysterious and perplexing and a delight to meet in print or on screen.

Beautiful scenes of Java Sea; wooden performances

[Jaww · 29 December 2005]

I've loved most Willem Dafoe films. Sam Neill was a joy in "Reilly, Ace of Spies" and "The Hunt for Red October". Irene Jacob is one of the most alluring and talented women in movies, magnificent in Kieslowski's film "Trois Colours-Red"--and good in "US Marshalls". Simon Callow was hilarious as the "Master of the Revels" in "Shakespeare in Love".

Alas, in "Victory", the four leads don't have the the screenplays and directors from their better movies. They become too wooden, one-dimensional, and more like caricatures rather than fleshed out characters.

The story may be based on the work of the late, great Joseph Conrad, but he was unavailable to improve the movie's dialog and pacing. Had Shakespeare been alive, he'd have loved "Shakespeare in Love". Would Conrd have loved "Victory"? I doubt it--except for the Java Sea scenery.

If you watch, ask yourself why it is called "Victory". Except for a minor line of dialog, does the title have anything to do with the movie?

About as close as you are going to get to the book.

[jasonwtx · 9/10 · 4 April 2003]

"Victory" by Conrad is probably my favorite book of all time. So when I saw the bad reviews on IMDB, I was scared to watch it. It popped on cable the other day and I decided to give it a shot. First off, the casting is spectacular. Almost all characters are what I pictured in my mind reading the book. *ESPECIALLY* Sam Neill as Mr. Jones. I'm not sure why someone was complaining about the cinematography. It's not epic or anything, but it isn't bad. Set layouts were great as well, just as I had pictured from the book. Acting is great throughout. I'm not sure if one would like it though unless they are a fan of the book or a Conrad fan. It is a bit different. It is certainly not a Friday night joe-six pack with a pizza movie. But I thought it was great.

Surprisingly good - a hidden gem

[liderc · 10/10 · 17 April 2006]

I'm surprised this movie is so little known and obviously was no box office hit when it was released. Joseph Conrad's novel "Victory" is brought to the screen with an amazing care about the setting and the details of the book, and I must admit that this is the first adaption of a novel that really managed to get very close to the mental images I had while reading the book. Performances are great overall, especially in the small parts the cast is an interesting mix of German and English-speaking actors. The direction (aided by the lush photography) is very good, too, also because it really tries to capture the atmosphere of the tropical setting and the novel. The score is no masterpiece, but surely better than average. The way the script changed the ending of the novel actually seems to me to be a good idea since it gives it all a more optimistic and positive touch. The only thing I didn't like was Sam Neill's extremely queeny and effeminate Mr. Jones. This negative stereotype of gay men already appears in Conrad's novel, but nowadays I think one should be able to get rid of this crap.