Rating: 
Summary: A Long Swim Home
Review: This is a slightly disturbing yet beautifully simple story of a man's slow unnerving return home. Burt Lancaster plays Ned Merril, a seemingly popular socialite amongst the wealthy suburban estates he neighbors. But today he has decided to swim home, going from pool to pool in a metaphorical river back to the home he shares with his wife and two daughters. Along the way he meets people he knows, including a young woman who once baby-sat his kids. But the more he swims, and the closer he gets to home, the more his facade of charm and joviality melts, ultimately revealing some else altogether.
Lancaster is great in the part. And considering he was a major actor at the time, this is a risky part, one it must be said, he plays in a bathing suit and nothing else. He is also in every scene. The man's eventual deterioration though is dealt with well, slowly building as the audience gets clues as to the possible ills surrounding him and his family. Based on a John Cheever short story, this is an excellent, yet troubling film, one possibly not well known, but featuring a superb performance from Lancaster.
Rating: 
Summary: That's entertainment!
Review: This is an interesting premise and Burt Lancaster is as usual, superb. That said, this film is monutmentally depressing, made all the more so by the fact that as things progress they go steadily downhill.
Add to this schlockmeister supreme Martin HAMlisch's overpowering score and, well, things can't get much grimmer.
What can I say? Fire up the popcorn and remember things always appear darkest before going entirely black.
Rating:
Summary: Mysterious
Review: This is one of those films that leaves you thinking, but you wonder what you're thinking about. It intentionally ends ambiguously so that the viewer isn't exactly sure what he or she has just seen.There are sections when you think the plot is going one way, then aburptly you realize what you thought was taking place wasn't. It is well-written in that regard, in that it holds your interest, but changes focus periodically. Rapport is built for the chief character at various points, but in the end you're not quite sure if he's a victim or a perpetrator of wrong. He's misunderstood and not easily categorized. Did he do the things the other characters say he did? Or was did they misunderstand him?
Rating: 
Summary: One of the best movies I ever saw
Review: This is such a moving film. As I get older it takes on new meaning. We learn with age if we are smart enough to recognize it. That is what Burt Lancaster's character must come to grips with. Does he? This film is like a dream. What did you imagine and what was real? Again, that is what Burt Lancaster's character must come face to face with. Even some of the other characters must face the dream world they have created. I really love this movie. It is happy. It is sad. It makes you wonder how you have lived your life, or if you are still young, how you will live it.
Rating:
Summary: Swimmer takes time...
Review: This movie is so complex and dynamic, that I'd need years to think about it to give it a proper review. All I can say at the moment is that it is simply fascinating.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Lancaster, But Terrible Directorial Decisions
Review: While aspects of this movie are rewarding and enjoyable, the film as a whole does not succeed. The filmmakers are to be commended for their audacious effort to adapt John Cheever's short story into a feature length film, but ultimately the directors have made woefully poor choices about what to keep - and, more significantly, what to get rid of - from the story. And those choices greatly diminish the power of the story. By way of plot summary, "The Swimmer" centers on a successful Connecticut suburbanite named Neddy Merrill who one summer day decides to swim to his house through each pool in the county, thereby inventing his own "river" - a river that he names for his wife, Lucinda. The swim, of course, does not take place over the course of one day, but rather over several years and each pool represents another fall from social grace for Merrill. Unfortunately for the adaptation, the directors of this film - Frank Perry at first, followed by a young Sydney Pollack - jettison the central idea of Cheever's story: the effects of alcoholism on a robust, successful man. In the span of nine pages, the supremely gifted Cheever crafted a haunting allegory about alcoholism. Alcohol and drunkenness play a pivotal role in Cheever's story - from repeated mentions of drinks and drinking to the whole idea of "swimming" through life. Cheever's economic prose does a much better job of spanning years between swimming pools than does this movie, and the allegory to alcoholism gives the short story a central organizing principle. For whatever reason, the director(s) craft Merrill as a snob and a narcissist who over the course of the story ruins his own life, as well as the lives of others, including his wife and daughters and a young woman with whom he has an extra-marital affair. Unfortunately, we get no sense of why - or, for that matter, how - Merrill spirals downhill and takes so many others with him. This "swimmer" isn't much without the alcoholism angle. In addition to the central problem that waylays the movie, there are other troubles, too. For example, the filmmakers add a relationship with a young girl that is unnecessary - except possibly to beat home the notion that each stop at a pool is a period of years, not minutes. Secondly, there is an interminable and schlocky late '60s montage scene (with the unnecessary young girl, of course) that is intended to demonstrate Neddy Merrill's vigor, but which serves only to waste time. With those criticisms aired, however, the film does offer several positives. Cardinal among these is Burt Lancaster's portrayal of Merrill, which strikes the right balance between virility and vigor in the early scenes, and sadness, disillusionment, and denudation in the later scenes. It's just too bad that the filmmakers decided to do away with the alcoholism angle because based on this outstanding performance, Burt Lancaster's Neddy Merrill could have ranked up there with the most harrowing portraits of alcoholics in the history of cinema. As it stands, "The Swimmer" is certainly worth a look - but not until you have read Cheever's short story, which unlike this adaptation, is transcendent.
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