Rating: 
Summary: Superb...for a Hollywood production
Review: With 10 years in the making, two years of filming and (as a previous reviewer noted) no less than six writers, Tolstoy's epic masterpiece à la Hollywood does get a bit muddled and lost at times, but who cares!?!? The film's cast is stellar. Audrey Hepburn, Mel Ferrer and Henry Fonda were each born to play their respective roles in this monumental film. Fonda plays the quixotic Pierre almost as good as Sergei Bondarchuk does in the more accurate (though also more brutal and heart-wrenching) 1967 Russian version. Hepburn, as the dazzling and ingenuous Natasha is a perfect foil to Mel Ferrer's Prince Andre, who loses his melancholy and determined seriousness only in the presence of Natasha (the same could almost be said of the film!).Where the Hollywood version is lacking in battle scenes, historic detail, commentary from ordinary Russians and several key character developments (Mary Oblonsky, Nicholas Rostov, the Tsar, Denisov et al), it more than makes up for it with personal performances (above mentioned actors), set and costume design and an overall mood and tone consistent with the book. This film should not be seen by people who demand faithful and tireless book-to-screen adaptations (the Sergei Bondarchuk version might be a better choice), but by people who want to get a sublime essence of one of the greatest novels ever written.
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