AllMovie

This made-for-TV production faithfully adapts F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel of Jazz Age glamour, decadence, and star-crossed love. While developing the novel's thesis -- the death of the American dream and the man who dreams it -- director Robert Markowitz and his staff dress up the film with the elegant trappings of the gentry and the nouveaux riches, including sprawling estates, vintage cars, chic fashions, and clubby restaurants and watering holes. The cinematography is stunning, whether fixed on the calming peace of a falling sun or on the wrenching horror of a body scuffed raw on pavement by a hit-and-run car. Composer Carl Davis distinguishes the film with a brilliant score of pulsating jazz and wistful mood music. British actor Toby Stephens portrays the main character, Jay Gatsby, a Jew and a Midwesterner by birth. To win back the woman he once loved -- the style-conscious, money-loving Daisy Buchanan (Mira Sorvino), who married wealth and status in the person of upper-crust snob and bigot Tom Buchanan (Martin Donovan) -- Gatsby doffs his Jewish name (Jimmy Gatz), amasses a fortune through bootlegging and other illegal activities, and moves into a mansion on West Egg, Long Island, just across the water from Daisy's home on East Egg. Then he has Daisy's cousin, Nick Carraway (Paul Rudd, re-introduce him to Daisy. Stephens' portrayal is mediocre for those who interpret Gatsby as mysterious, articulate, urbane, insouciant. But his portrayal is just right for those who interpret him as more Midwestern than Eastern, more plebeian than aristocrat. The other actors -- Sorvino, Donovan, Rudd and those in supporting roles -- all perform capably. Overall, A&E's Great Gatsby is a worthy production that deserves more praise than criticism.