The tyranist's thoughts
While on vacation recently, I had the pleasure of listening to a collection of Philip K. Dick short stories on audio cassette performed by Keir Dullea. I've long been a fan of Mr. Dick's and had never read even one of the stories in the collection. Needless to say, my driving may have suffered periodically as my attention was firmly elsewhere. Of the five stories, three of them will have been made into movies when Minority Report comes out next year. Needless to say, as soon as I returned from vacation (almost literally, I think I had dinner first) I went out and rented a copy of Screamers as well as Total Recall.
My expectations weren't too high for this movie even though I had just heard and loved the story. It wasn't too difficult to realize that the story was somewhat predictable and while it would translate pretty well, the movie would also be somewhat predictable. Moreso because I knew the story. They did a decent job though. First thing to go was the cold war/nuclear winter scenario, which was nicely translated to the high sci-fi setting of a mining colony on a distant planet. Next were certain minor plot details, only one of which was changed in a way that I found annoying. On the whole, the movie is very faithful to the story and only at the end when they had to Hollywood up things a bit did I truly thing that the adaptation had gone awry.
Peter Weller does a decent job in spite of how unlikeable I think he is. I also really liked Jennifer Rubin's performance. No reason why, I just like her. Maybe I had to find someone to identify with in the movie. The setting was very nice and I liked what they did with the screamers/blades.
Definitely worth seeing if you are a Dick fan. Less so if you are a sci-fi horror fan. Other than the ending, there are some really interesting ideas here and you might like it a little more than I did if you haven't read the story.