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BY PETER KEOUGH
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130 MINUTES | AT THE REGAL FALMOUTH 10 + THE REGAL CLARKS POND 8 Rehabilitated by his Oscar for The Pianist, Roman Polanski is now the kind of filmmaker who adapts classics — though in this case it’s not so much Dickens’s original as David Lean’s 1948 version, which he seems to be imitating, with variations. Instead of Lean’s expressionistic chiaroscuro, Polanski employs a palette of corroded greens and grays with occasional sunny glints of color to mirror Oliver’s turns of fortune. Oliver (Barney Clark) again is a "mealy" boy and the least interesting "literary character" in the story — Polanski even skips that quintessential Dickensian device, the mysterious parentage. Neither does Ben Kingsley’s Fagin make much of an impression; he’s more pitiful than diabolical, and in his toned-down Jewishness he seems less of a racial caricature but more of a cinematic cliché. Best are Jamie Foreman as Sykes and Mark Strong as his crony Toby Crackit, whose orange Harpo hair and inappropriate glee evoke the Polanski of old. Otherwise, this is too much Oliver, not enough Twist.
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