Nicholas Nickleby

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Think about it. Have you ever seen a bad movie based on a Dickens novel? Rich in characters, abustle with action, aswarm with heart-stopping coincidences, the great writer's creations constitute the most cinematic body of work in all literature. The only problem they present to the filmmaker is length; the art of their adaptation always lies in paring down.

It is a challenge writer-director Douglas McGrath is very largely up to in Nicholas Nickleby. Now and then his film feels a bit rushed and breathless, but mostly you sink gratefully into its handsomely staged plenitude.

In great measure that's because it is so marvelously acted, starting with Charlie Hunnam as the eponymous hero. Blond but never bland in his stalwart innocence, he is determined to protect his desperately impoverished mother and sister and his crippled, loving friend Smike (Jamie Bell) from the machinations of dastardly Uncle Ralph.

Played with thoughtful control by Christopher Plummer, Ralph is not a man who leaps into malice; he muses his way toward it, as befits a figure whose destructive web spans decades. This great performance is wonderfully supported by a full complement of England's best character men (among them Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay and Edward Fox).

McGrath stays focused on the heart of his story, the conflict between perfect good and perfect evil, making for a beguiling evocation of the quality that keeps Dickens evergreen: the exuberant openness with which he expresses our most basic emotions. --R.S.