Lord Jim

1965

2h 34m

Adventure

List

57%

Tomatometer

14 Reviews

55%

Audience Score

1,000+ Ratings

Young merchant seaman Jim (Peter O'Toole) signs onto a ship bound for Mecca. During a storm, the crew flees, and Jim goes with them, leaving the passengers to fend for themselves. A guilty Jim confesses to his dereliction of duty and becomes a drifter. A chance for redemption comes when he is offered a dangerous job: transporting gunpowder and rifles up the river to a village that is fending off bandits. Jim sets off to lead the fight, earning the villagers' gratitude.

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Variety Staff

Variety

Brooks, while capturing the spirit of adventure of the novel, only superficially catches the inner emotional and spiritual conflict of its hero.

Apr 8, 2008

Full Review

Time Out

Brooks' adaptation of Conrad's novel is immeasurably better than its reputation.

Feb 9, 2006

Full Review

Bosley Crowther

New York Times

Something bewildering has happened in Richard Brooks's making of it, and it misses at being either Conrad or sheer entertainment cinema.

Rated: 2/5

May 9, 2005

Full Review

Dennis Schwartz

Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews

At best, it only resembles Conrad's 1900 novel.

Rated: C+

Sep 7, 2010

Full Review

TV Guide

This stunningly exotic film of Conrad's classic features O'Toole in the title role.

Rated: 4/4

Apr 8, 2008

Full Review

Cole Smithey

ColeSmithey.com

Rated: 5/5

Feb 23, 2008

Full Review

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Audience Member

Saw this movie a long time ago as a boy. I thought it was a great movie. Just saw it again recently and still think it is great. Eli Walach as the war lord was very impressive.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/07/23

Full Review

Audience Member

The movie Lord Jim has exotic location shots, but the script veers between the dark vision of human degradation in Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad's other most famous novella) and Peter O'Toole's masochistic suffering performance in Lawrence of Arabia. The dramatic tension in the film arises between the inner torment of the character of Lord Jim and the action sequences as the villains, who are reminiscent of the bandits in The Magnificent Seven (or its source Seven Samurai), attack the innocent villagers.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/27/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Director and writer Richard Brooks turns Joseph Conrad's fascinating investigation of guilt and survival into a turgid and interminable bore. With its uneasy combination of beautiful photography, choppy editing and zero interest in its central character's tortured psychology, it's left to the likes of James Mason's bearded Gentleman Brown and Eli Wallach as the other major villain to rescue this humourless epic from ccomplete inertia. Peter O'Toole reprises his foppish Lawrence, but without Robert Bolt's words and David Lean's direction he and we are lost in the jungle.

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

01/27/23

Full Review

Audience Member

In a decade known for great epics, this should have been great. But it had the wrong writer, director and is a total slog. Begs for a remake!

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

06/07/19

Full Review

Audience Member

The best movie score ever composed!

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

02/26/23

Full Review

Audience Member

A bungled first act that deflates the inciting incident is balanced out by a stronger second act and an emotional, albeit dragged out, third. Top casting and lavish Oriental locations help out too.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/01/23

Full Review

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Richard Brooks

Director

Peter O'Toole

Lord Jim

James Mason

Gentleman Brown

Curd Jürgens

Cornelius

Eli Wallach

The General

Jack Hawkins

Marlow

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Synopsis

Young merchant seaman Jim (Peter O'Toole) signs onto a ship bound for Mecca. During a storm, the crew flees, and Jim goes with them, leaving the passengers to fend for themselves. A guilty Jim confesses to his dereliction of duty and becomes a drifter. A chance for redemption comes when he is offered a dangerous job: transporting gunpowder and rifles up the river to a village that is fending off bandits. Jim sets off to lead the fight, earning the villagers' gratitude.

Director: Richard Brooks
Screenwriter: Richard Brooks
Production Co: Columbia
Genre: Adventure
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): Feb 25, 2014
Runtime: 2h 34m

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