The Beach

I remembered when this film came out; it was the summer of 2000, and my sister wouldn't stop raving about how much she wanted to see it. I didn't know what it was about, and I'm not even sure if she ever did see it; all I knew was that she had a thing for Brad Pitt and back then, apparently Leonardo Dicaprio too. J

Turned out to be a pretty darn good movie; nothing I haven't seen before, but certainly some decent messages about life and what you might think it's about. It spoke about how skewed our vision is when we're younger, and how easy we think it is to try to forget about it all but if we don't deal with it right there and then, it always comes back to bite us in the arse'.

Written by John Hodge and Alex Garland, and directed by Danny Boyle, the crew did an astounding job at delivering the true essence of the two sides of Thailand. The one we all know, and the one we all wish we could visit. No island get-away 'anywhere' in the world would be complete without Bob Marley's 'Redemption Songs' and all you can smoke of weed. We get that, we get the excitement of exploring a new land and how quickly it becomes like parasites eating away at a paradise because it is overridden with those who only seek to use and destroy. It was from there that our young Richard played by Leonardo DiCaprio was trying so hard to escape from. Because as he said, he had travelled all this way from home, to find just want he was missing, but busy, crazy Bangkok, wasn't what he wanted, it was paradise.

Paradise was what he found, at first, before he realized "the person he used to be….after the truth…"and that "…nothing must interrupt the pursuit of pleasure, not even dying…"For we all can jump off a cliff to find paradise and swim to one island to the next but we must never forget where we came from, who we are, and more importantly why we're here; because lo and behold, there just may be sharks lurking in those waters, one's that like to take a BIG bite out of your heart and dreams!

This film was full of adventure, hot young tanned bodies in the sun, and some excellent narration and acting from Leonardo Dicaprio as usual. It's about time he won an Oscar already, he's been working at it quite hard from the beginning! Despite the movies utter predicament, with shark attacks and back-stabbing, even by Francoise, played by Virginie Ledoyen who easily walked out on her boyfriend for the 'new kid on the block' the audience was kept on the edge of their seats by the ever engaging Tilda Swinton, who played the leader of their 'Animal Farmesque' island paradise named Sal.

It was a strange, tropical adventure with a touch of romance, a touch of fear and plenty of incredible Thailand island cinematography. J