Les Misérables

In early nineteenth-century France, Jean Valjean is released after years of hard labour for stealing bread. A bishop's mercy sets him on a new path, and under another name he becomes a respected mayor of a small town. His past returns in the figure of Javert, a police inspector who refuses to let the case rest and pursues him for years. Valjean also takes responsibility for Cosette, the daughter of a woman he knew, and their lives become entangled with a student uprising in Paris. This adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel was directed by Bille August, the fourth of the fifteen films he has directed to date, following Smilla's Sense of Snow and preceding Return to Sender. Rafael Yglesias wrote the screenplay, and the cast includes Liam Neeson as Valjean, Geoffrey Rush as Javert, Uma Thurman as Fantine, Claire Danes as Cosette, Hans Matheson as Marius and Peter Vaughan as the bishop, among twenty-nine credited performers. Produced by Columbia Pictures and Mandalay Entertainment on a budget of about fourteen million dollars, the film took roughly the same amount at the worldwide box office. On IMDb it holds 7.4 out of 10 from around 46,000 votes, while on TMDB it has 7.2 from roughly 710 votes. A critics' rating of 7.1 from 43 reviews places it close to the audience scores.