Of Mice and Men

Sinise's second crack at directing, with a Horton Foote adaptation of the John Steinbeck Depression era novel - about innocently lethal retard Lenny (Malkovich) and his increasingly despairing protector George (Sinise) - which seems doomed to remain a period piece. Big Lenny likes stroking soft things, and nags George to describe life on their fantasy farm while they labour as ranch-hands under the tyrannical Curly (Siemaszko). Lenny crunches Curly's fist to pulp in his paw, and over-responds to the come-ons from Curly's wife (Fenn). It's hard not to snigger at her arching about and complaining of the heat, and harder still to believe Malkovich's shamble and gape, a simian variant on Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man. Both are strictly Dogpatch caricatures, while Sinise seems plain vain.