Made for network TV, this is a handsome retelling of Dostoevsky's novel of justice and conscience in Czarist Russia. Appropriately ornate and squalid location shooting in Budapest, Hungary, replicates 19th-century St. Petersburg, where impoverished young idealist Raskolnikov (Dempsey), comparing himself to Napoleon, murders a greedy moneylender (and an unlucky witness), rationalizing that it's for the betterment of society. But the scholarly killer underestimates the power of guilt, especially as a patient police inspector (Kingsley) closes in on him. Even with the simplified English-language dialogue (delivered with the most enthusiastic of Slavic accents), the script does an expert job of distilling a lengthy book and its weighty themes - high school students take note. For another screen adaptation of Great Literature that gets the tone just right, check out James Earl Jones and Richard Harris in CRY THE BELOVED COUNTRY.

release year: 1999

star(s): Ben Kingsley    Julie Delpy    Patrick Dempsey