Review: There's no mistaking that 'Cyrano' is among the year's best films

MGM/United Artists, 2021.

There's no mistaking that "Cyrano" is among the year's best films...that year being 2021. Despite it's late February 2022 release, "Cyrano" was considered as a 2021 movie, which led it to garner some awards, like being named the overall Best Picture winner by the Detroit Film Critics Society...our group also named its star Peter Dinklage as Best Actor.

It's finally arriving in theaters, and I urge you to consider seeing it on the big-screen.

Grade: A

Dinklage reprises his role as Cyrano de Bergerac in "Cyrano," which itself is adapted from the stage play by Erica Schmidt. Of course, the classic Edmond Rostand story of "Cyrano de Bergerac" has seen several adaptations over the years, but Dinklage and Schmidt's (who are married in real life) off-Broadway version received rave reviews when it debuted in 2019.

The story originally featured Cyrano as a man with a large nose, but this physical attribute has been replaced in this version with Dinklage's height as his main insecurity. He falls in love with Roxanne (Haley Bennett). A dashing soldier, Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is also in love with Roxanne, and since Cyrano knows that his physical appearance and social status will forever keep him from his love, he offers his strong poetry skills to Christian...Roxanne falls in love with the letters, thinking they are written by Christian when in fact they are the words of Cyrano.

It's tragic and beautiful, and this musical version feels haunting. There are several great songs, set pieces, costumes and top-notch production design (the costume design was in fact the only area in which "Cyrano" earned an Oscar nomination this year). Dinklage is better than ever, but I was transformed by the incredibly sensitive and vulnerable performance by Haley Bennett...a performance that ranks up there for me as one of the all-time greatest snubs of all-time, in that it most certainly was worthy of Oscar consideration.

Go see "Cyrano," a musical about a little man that whole-heartedly deserves to be seen on the big-screen.

Grade: A

Genre: Musical, Romance, Drama.
Run Time: 2 hours 4 minutes.
Rated R.

Starring: Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Ben Mendelsohn.

Directed by Joe Wright ("The Woman in the Window," "Pan," "Darkest Hour," "Atonement").

"Cyrano" is in theaters on Friday, February 25th, 2022.