The Man Who Killed Don Quixote: Film Review

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote: Film Review 

Cast: Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Olga Kurylenko
Director: Terry Gilliam

Once upon a time, Terry Gilliam was creatively ruined by this film, a stuck in production hell piece about Don Quixote.

Finally, it sees the light of air.

Adapted from Miguel de Cervantes classic novel, and starting with the phrase, "25 years in the making and in the unmaking", it's the story of Adam Driver's Toby, a cynical advertising director, who finds himself trapped in the outrageous delusions of an old Spanish shoe-maker who believes himself to be Don Quixote (Jonathan Pryce).

As he negotiates the relationship, his grip on reality comes and goes.

There's a large degree of folly in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, a movie that meanders and rambles as much as it crumbles with the weight of expectation.

It starts off well, with Driver's Toby losing command of a shoot bringing parallels to Gilliam's problems with shooting the film. And Pryce delivers a masterful turn as a man whose grip of what's going on is simply lost.

There are many parallels here - it's almost as if Pryce's Quixote is the perfect film, lurching back and forth from the grasp of Toby's director, hinting at what could be and sucking him in with his delusions. Maybe Gilliam was too close to this for too long, but The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is a film that's bathed in pretensions and threatens to get too close to delirium.

There are moments of humour throughout, and Driver's a likeable enough lead to pursue this film down the rabbit hole, but ultimately, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is a film that just tests the patience rather than fully embracing what it could have been.