THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY (2005)

You have to go back to THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT/’69 to find a top-flight cast in a semi-classic literary adaptation this disastrous. Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Gabriel Byrne, Kathy Bates, F. Murray Abraham, and many others all hit career lows (Keitel & De Niro appear to be sight-reading their lines) in this vanity(?) production of Thornton Wilder ’s old chestnut about the strangers in Peru whose lives lead to that unsupported bridge. Here the emphasis is on a post-mortem religious debate with distracting fades-to-black before each tone-deaf flashback as scripter/megger Mary McGuckian demonstrates a talent for having the camera at just the wrong spot, made worse by one jarring edit after another. You’ll be thrilled to know that there are fifteen producers credited. If only they had all been on that bridge.