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It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Between 1958 and 1970 David Lean directed four miraculous epic movies. "Bridge on the River Kwai" came out in an era of epic productions and may have been the first with a wry sense of humor. The second, "Lawrence of Arabia", is probably the best, having the most telescopic focus. Though "Lawrence" begins in the 1930s, it goes immediately to the 1916-17 Arab Revolt against the 500-year-old Muslim Ottoman Empire and stays there. It's helped along by a great cast, including Peter O'Toole's ethereal, star-making turn as Lawrence. "Doctor Zhivago" improves on its source novel by cutting out subplots. And while the novel ZHIVAGO is phenomenal, its characters feel aloof most of the time, as if Pasternak is writing a history of them rather than a story where they live and breathe. The greater part of "Zhivago" takes place around the same time as the Arab Revolt, in the Russian Revolution.Then we come to "Ryan's Daughter." No one does epic like David Lean. He has an eye for it. Not only do his characters come to life, so do his backdrops. The desert was a character in its own right in "Lawrence." His characters come to life wonderfully, something lost in many epic productions, possibly because Lean's reputation let him hire the best actors."Daughter" is a miraculous movie in many ways, but it's full of problems, the cast foremost. While as full of fine actors as most Lean productions it has some curious missteps. First is Ryan's daughter herself, played by Sarah Miles. Lean just did two movies with title characters, and one expects Ryan's daughter to dominate as much as Peter O'Toole's Lawrence or Omar Sharif's Zhivago.Unfortunately, while Sarah Miles might well be the prettiest girl in an obscure Irish village, she lacks sex appeal. Julie Christie was not the prettiest actress in the world (in some scenes in "Zhivago" she looked like a female Peter O'Toole) but the way she was photographed and lighted, along with her natural attributes, Christie oozed sex in her sexy scenes. Sarah Miles simply doesn't. Miles originally distanced herself from the part as her husband wrote it and Lean tested other actresses. But Miles was Lean's first choice so other tests were probably perfunctory. Miles can act, but she does not project the necessary sex appeal.Miles' co-sex-star Christopher Jones can't act. He was picked up from another movie before Lean learned his entire role was looped by another actor. Jones photographs well, but since he can't do the simplest acting jobs his part is like a lot of still pictures.Then there's Robert Mitchum, the third side to the triangle with Ryan's daughter. If you're a Mitchum fan you wonder why a dynamic actor is cast so against type as a dull, middle-aged Irish schoolteacher. He actually does a fine job (in a role actively sought by the more likely Gregory Peck) but he overpowers Christopher Jones (who was dubbed, as he was in the movie where Lean first saw him).Lean makes a few missteps himself. For "Kwai" and "Lawrence" and "Zhivago" he uses well-known settings. The Irish "Easter Rising" of 1916 may be famous in some quarters, but for most of us it's an historical learning experience that detracts from the story (curiously, "Lawrence" and "Zhivago" and "Daughter" take place at round about the same historical time). David Lean's rebels are always rough and often cold characters, but actors like Anthony Quinn and Tom Courtenay were able to give them depth and interesting new angles. Barry Foster, the lead Irish rebel in "Daughter", comes off as simply brutal.Lean also tries something new, a "dream" sequence where Mitchum's character fancies what's going on between his wife and her lover. Unfortunately, Lean shot it so realistically it comes off as merely confusing as it looks so legitimate.Lean had a wonderful eye for epic detail, and he tries to make a storm on the Irish coast as much a character as the desert in "Lawrence" or the snow in "Zhivago." But his characters are basically small, and the actors are unable to rise to storm level. The storm inundates the characters.With "Daughter" Lean shot an epic from a non-epic story. Overall, it is incredibly delectable visually, like a beautiful Easter bunny that's hollow inside. Perhaps it was the casting of the three main actors in the romantic triangle: the woman who can act who lacks sex appeal, the man who can't act, and the actor who is woefully miscast. As it is, actors in minor parts seem to want to take up the slack. Trevor Howard, John Mills and Leo McKern all chew the scenery wonderfully. After two largely humorless epics, Lean uses wry irony here by making Mills' village idiot the only character in the piece who's aware of what's going on.While considered Lean's big flop (it certainly didn't meet expectations) "Daughter" was the eighth highest grossing movie in 1970 (the leader being another love story called . . . "Love Story." But Lean's flick was also trounced at the box office by "MASH," "Patton" and "The Aristocats." "Daughter"barely scraped in five million more than the bizarre "Chariots of the Gods." Compared to Lean's other epics "Daughter" was a financial and artistic disappointment. Today it seems an unfocused jumble that lacks the narrative force or the strong characters of his other epics. But no Lean movie is without merit and "Daughter" is luscious eye candy for those who have the patience to veg through nearly 200 hours of unremitting loveliness, where the scenery and design are miles ahead of the characters. Peter O'Toole was able to stand in the desert and be a focus, the way John Wayne took the eye when he stood in Monument Valley. In the storm of "Ryan's Daughter" the characters are merely dark figures running back and forth and being deluged.

David Lean is not quite at his best here like he was with Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge on the River Kwai, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and Brief Encounter, but Ryan's Daughter is a very good (though flawed film). It is better than most directors' later films and did not deserve the critical roasting it got.There were a couple of things that weren't quite right with Ryan's Daughter. Christopher Jones, despite looking the part, is dreadfully stiff and wooden in his role, showing little involvement or range, by far the (only) weak link in the cast. And while the score from Maurice Jarre has its moments like the main theme, the tavern scene and the beach hallucination and is not bad music at all on its own, it is for me the weakest of his collaborations with Lean and doesn't fit within the film, sounding too inappropriately jaunty often (especially Michael's theme) in a film that would have benefited better with a lusher, more Celtic touch.However, Ryan's Daughter is a beautiful-looking film, with grand settings, rich use of colours and Freddie Young's sweeping Oscar-winning cinematography (especially in the storm scene). It's superbly directed as ever by Lean, taking full advantage of the epic scope of the visuals and story and while deliberate he does succeed in making the story compelling and the characters interesting enough. The script from Robert Bolt is intelligent, witty and very thoughtful and never becomes over-the-top or slack, complete with a good balance of the personal, the historical and the political.With the story, it's deliberate in pace but never interminably so and is often very moving (even if a few parts in the first half could have done with more meat), complete with the unforgettable storm scene. It is also one of Lean's more cohesive later stories, being less sprawling than Doctor Zhivago and less drifting than A Passage to India (which are also both fine films). The historical backdrop is very effective, more so I feel than Doctor Zhivago's, and the characters are interesting and intimate.Apart from Jones, the performances are of a very high standard. Robert Mitchum was courageous casting and is a revelation in a different and gentler role to the tough guy roles he took on, while Sarah Miles is moving as one of the characters that evolves the most throughout the course of the story. Whether John Mills deserved his Oscar is up to debate, but what matters more to me was whether his performance is good and, while it is understandably one of the film's most divisive components, the almost unrecognisable Mills is very amusing and affecting as the village idiot. Leo McKern more than excellently portrays a hypocritical, cowardly and domineering father figure and Trevor Howard does a wonderful job providing the moral compass of the story. Barry Foster shows off briefly but is suitably intense and grittily dignified, likewise Gerald Sim's appearance is very brief but is very memorable.Overall, a flawed but very good and undervalued (back then and now) film from David Lean. It may not be quite a masterpiece, but it is not even close to a disaster. 8/10 Bethany Cox

As one would expect, David Lean made great use of the vast, stark expanses of Ireland by the sea in this story about a troubled love set against the politics of Irish independence. The result is a moody, languid film that focuses on the relationship between the passion-starved wife of a small school and an English major temporarily assigned to the region.The trivia notes on this site detail the many problems during the production of "Ryan's Daughter". Still, the final product is a fairly successful story that revolves around the forces of religion and conformity in the small town, where the church--through the parish priest (Trevor Howard)--is the supreme authority on all matters. The film also has something to say about mob rule.The wife (Sara Miles), though discontent in her marriage to the teacher (Robert Mitchum), still manages to love her husband. But she feels a compulsion that sets her in opposition to the priest, the town, and propriety. John Mills won the Oscar for his poignant portrayal of the town idiot, a performance that echoes Charles Laughton's Quasimodo.My only complaint is the soundtrack, which is often jarring and intrusive. This film is uncompromising in its depiction of human nature, which is understandably exaggerated within the confines of the small, insular community perched along the raw, windswept coastline. It engages the viewer and transports him to another time and place, where (and when) ethics were etched in black and white.

On the one hand, there's a fine cast, beautiful photography, serviceable music, and sensitive direction. On the other, an over-long, laborious script and stagy crowd business. There's also a rather small, intimate romance that seems to need a smaller-scale production format (like a "Brief Encounter") rather than a grandiose blockbuster presentation (like a "Laurence of Arabia").However, the film seems to be improving its image as time goes on, and David Lean's slow direction and grandiose production scale appears to be less criticized. The challenges the production experienced were formidable, from drugged and dubbed actors to injured and conflicted production personnel. Fortunately--especially for MGM Studios--the film wasn't a financial disaster.Poor Chris Jones received a public and critical pounding, which probably contributed to his abandonment entirely of the acting profession. Still, his final product came out alright--a kind of Dean/Brando quality piece of work. Robert Mitchum's against-type performance was surprisingly successful, and Sarah Miles was strong throughout.Likewise the ugly, though exaggerated, nature of the townsfolk mob contrasted well with the breathtaking landscape. In the end, the film rates about 2 1/2 out of four stars, and only time will tell whether it will further improve.