From left to right: Tobey McGuire (Nick Carraway), Leonardo DiCaprio (Jay Gatsby), Carey Mulligan (Daisy Buchanan) and Joel Edgerton (Tom Buchanan). Photo by Warner Bros.
Director Baz Lurmann had his work cut out for him in the $127 million-dollar Hollywood adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s world renown novel The Great Gatsby. The official trailer was released last week and critics have been mixed in their reviews of the snippet.
Zach Johnson of US Magazine – “In typical Luhrman fashion, the visuals used to recreate the roaring ’20s are magnificently intricate.”
Jordan Zakarin of HollywoodReporter.com – “The clarity of the shots, the nods to modern crime dramas and artificial landscapes would then seem to clash with its 1920s setting, but in an America that is today straddling the oppulence of Jay Gatsby and the post-Crash poverty of a decade later, there is something appropriate about the juxtaposition.”
Andrew Losowsky of HuffingtonPost.com – “My first issue is with the casting. The eponymous character is a blank slate, on which stories great and evil can be placed with equal ease. Think Viggo Mortensen in “A History of Violence”; the movie rests on the ability to stare at this man and think “Could he?” Leo, on the other hand, is famously baby-faced. He couldn’t let the shadow of war and bootlegging shudder through his visage, even if he wanted to. He doesn’t have the cheekbones.”
The movie is set to release this year on Christmas Day.