Joe Wright

[Ronan:] I got to see everything in a new light, and so fresh and pure. So that was fun. And it’s something I've held onto, actually...

Wright's ability to evoke sympathy for even the marginal characters--partly by exercising ingeniously economical staging to catch them in private moments--distinguishes this Pride & Prejudice.

In the story's nooks and crannies are ideas to savor...the human-condition horrors of unpassable distances of space, time, and reconciliation.

[This] bromantic drama...becomes as frustratedly impotent as Lopez feels, and as chokingly symbolic as Ayers looks with an Uncle Sam top hat on his head and an American flag in his shopping cart.

A flashy but disposable exercise in style over substance...

Who's for 130 minutes of alienation?...We're able to intellectualize why we should care (those social strictures are crushing hearts!), but we're too distracted to be moved.