THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA (1990) *** Other than building up to, and then inexplicably omitting, the best line from the Hemingway they do an excellent job of catching the spirit of the novel. Anthony Quinn is epic as the fisherman, when he's alone center stage he's as good as anyone. The little boy is good too, the other actors are uniformly horrible. They don't matter, the entire thing's about the Quinn character anyway and it's interesting to see such an excellent job done with such a great book. It's actually much more entertaining to read about a fish being caught than to watch it as the character can, while his hands are bleeding raw and he's fighting off sharks, think of the brave Joe Dimaggio playing through the horror of a bone spur-realize that he doesn't know what a bone spur is-and then only know that it must be something truely grotesque if it impedes a man of the magnitude of Dimaggio. Bruce Boughton's music doesn't generally help much, but the bullfight stuff during the catch scene is inspired.
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