The Beach Review

Twentieth Century Fox widened a real beach on Ko Phi Phi Le for this shoot, clearing dunes and planting palms, then spent years in Thai courts over it, so a film about travellers ruining paradise carries its own footnote. Half of what reached the screen is wonderful. Darius Khondji shoots the swim across the channel, the jump from the waterfall and the lagoon at first light with a clarity that explains why a generation booked flights.

Danny Boyle runs the first hour on appetite alone: Robert Carlyle raving at Richard through the wall of a Bangkok guest house, the armed farmers in the cannabis field, Tilda Swinton playing Sal with the brightness of a head girl and the ethics of a prison warden. Then John Hodge's script loses its nerve. Richard's descent into a video game fantasy is a gimmick rather than a breakdown, the shark victim left in the trees to die is the strongest idea in the film and it gets dropped, and Virginie Ledoyen's Francoise exists to be wanted and then betrayed.

The narration keeps explaining what the images already said. DiCaprio is very good while Richard is ingratiating and lost once Richard is meant to be feral.