The award-winning movie musical version of Les Misérables (Universal), one of the greatest and bleakest tragedies in literary history, has arrived on home video. A long-running success on Broadway (16 years in its original run), the stage musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's epic novel by Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil and Herbert Kretzmer was also a hit in London's West End.
Spanning a nearly 20 year tumultuous period in France, from 1815 to 1832, Les Miz parallels the intimate and complex relationship between paroled convict 24601 aka Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) and his relentless pursuer Javert (an utterly out of his league Russell Crowe) with the ongoing revolutionary atmosphere stirred up by the disparity between the poor and the upper class. As a free man, Valjean reinvents himself as the proprietor of a successful factory, almost going unnoticed by Javert.
Fantine (Anne Hathaway in an Oscar-winning performance), a single mother who tries to keep her head down and do her job, becomes the object of attention not just to a perverse factory foreman but also to her envious co-workers. A factory floor confrontation leads to Fantine losing her job and turning to a life of desperation (she sells her hair, teeth and turns tricks) in order to send money to the innkeepers caring for her young daughter Cosette (Isabelle Allen).
This is where Les Miz's meager comic relief arrives, in the guise of the innkeepers, Thénardier (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Madame Thénardier (Helena Bonham Carter in yet another costume drama). But it's all too brief. When Valjean comes to Fantine's rescue (much too late to be of any good), he vows to find Cosette and take her into his care.