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The Claim adapts The Mayor of Casterbridge, an 1886 British novel by Thomas Hardy, to the post-Gold Rush Sierra Mountains, where the city of Kingdom Come is governed by a kind lord named Daniel Dillon (Peter Mullan). What unfolds in this town is a story of money, tangled love affairs, and sins returning to haunt the sinners.

J. Robert Parks of The Phantom Tollbooth saw the movie well before it opened. "It's one of the better movies I saw last year," he reports. "The film's two major themes, love and money, are both rich ones, and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce mines them both, exploring their nuances and how one influences the other. Interestingly, The Claim finds more passion in lucre than love. Though there are two different love triangles, the film spends just as much time exploring the corrosive effects of wealth and its potential loss." Parks gives great praise to the cast: "Though Wes Bentley and Milla Jovovich get top billing, it's [Peter] Mullan's immersion in a man who realizes what he's lost that is most compelling."

Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun-Times also praised Mullan's performance among the film's other assets: "A movie like this rides on its cinematography, and Alwin H. Kuchler evokes the cold darkness so convincingly that Kingdom Come seems built on an abyss. Like the town of Presbyterian Church in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, it is a folly built by greed where common sense would have steered clear." Brian Miller's Seattle Weekly review is a mix of applause and complaints: "[Director Michael] Winterbottom does render the frozen pioneer outpost with nice period detail, but the clumsy dialogue portends events and encapsulates character rather too easily. Still, the flawed Claim has its cathartic power. And like a certain famous old monarch raging on the heath, Dillon's ultimate loss of kingdom and family is heartbreaking for its tragic inevitability."

In his review at Salon.com, Charles Taylor first praises the source: Thomas Hardy. "It's a fair question how an author whose stories are so fatalistic … so unrelenting and harsh, can also give so much pleasure," he writes. "Hardy … doesn't hover in judgment as much as stand on level ground with his characters, observing them, understanding that none of us is exempt from such failings and sins." He goes on to praise the film adaptation: "The Claim does justice to Hardy even though it works in a very different tone. What links the movie most securely to its source is the sense of fate that hovers over the proceedings … you feel that inexorable movement toward catastrophe that hovers over Hardy, even as the film proceeds in its own style."

Those seeking something less brainy had unsettling plenty in alternate fare. Sylvester Stallone's racetrack picture Driven inspired more than one critic to re-name it Drivel.

The U.S. Catholic Conference's critic was one of many to give the film low marks: "Fueled by lame dialogue, the predictable tale of rivalry and romance is notable only for director Renny Harlin's competent action scenes of racing mayhem." Movieguide reports: "Driven's classic premise might have delivered truly great redemptive entertainment if certain annoying cinematic distractions had been avoided. Harlin's annoying racing montages, hackneyed car race track master shots and excessively loud rock music score undermine scriptwriter Sylvester Stallone's efforts." The same reviewer was bothered that "there is no mention or reference to the God of the race track." Preview posts: "Slow motion crashes and driver's-eye views of the race may attract race fans but others will wonder how Stallone got financing for this soap opera on wheels. Off-track interactions between these one-dimensional characters give the audience little to do but snicker at supposedly serious moments." Preview also cautions parents: "Few obscenities are heard, but strong profanity, some sexually suggestive dialogue and ample displays of scantily clad females further cheapen the ride and earn a 'quite objectionable' rating."

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April (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45