To say that Eastwood, who directed, has done a first-rate job of adaptation fails to do him justice. What he's brought off is closer to alchemy.

It is easy to analyze the mechanism, but more difficult to explain why this film is so deeply moving.

A beautiful film, not only in the way it was photographed, but for the manner through which the characters are revealed to us.

Limited by the vapidity of this material while he trims its excesses with the requisite machete, Mr. Eastwood locates a moving, elegiac love story at the heart of Mr. Waller's self-congratulatory overkill.

Streep and Eastwood's chemistry makes the film.

Bridges is another example of Eastwood's remarkable economy of style as both a director and an actor. It is neither his best work nor his worst, though it is a fascinating exploration.

Clint Eastwood transcends the story's cliches with a classically restrained yet steadily imaginative filmmaking style.

Robert Waller's inexplicably colossal bestseller is transferred to the screen with more art than it deserves, but neither old-fashioned Hollywood craftsmanship nor the massive star power of Eastwood and Streep can compensate for the story's intellectual slightness and emotional implausibility.

Given the intelligent restraint of the treatment, this is about as fine an adaptation of this material as one could hope for, although there is still something of a gap between the impressive skill of the filmmaking and the ultimately irredeemable aspects of the source.

Screenwriter Richard LaGravenese and director Clint Eastwood have turned out something sombre and restrained -- almost, in fact, good (though it's too long).

Through the actress's effort and her director's generosity, this book about an irresistible man becomes a movie about a remarkable woman. Madison County is Eastwood's gift to women.

What Eastwood and Streep have done is to bring a semblance of emotional reality to the story.

The reason for the film's success is simple. Screenwriter Richard LaGravenese and director Eastwood skirt most of novelist Robert James Waller's excesses.

The film version, competently directed by Clint Eastwood and beautifully acted by Meryl Streep, isn't about to mess with a popular formula - this is a straight-up adaptation as faithful as a fawning spouse.