I wasn't going to add a comment here, but I found myself breezing through the other comments, with the constant "poor story structure" crap. Try "complex story structure" or "unusual story structure." They can't ALL be "The Incredible Hulk", folks. As for the complaint that the movie goes on for fifteen minutes after a climactic event: the film ends when the story does. The story isn't ended by the car incident.
I haven't read the book, so I took the film on its own terms. It's a film for intelligent adults with an attention span. The acting is great. Hopkins plays a character who is tragic in the classical sense: a potentially great man with a fatal flaw (and his is a whopper). Kidman is absolutely believable, Anna Deveare Smith is heart-breaking as Silk's mother, Gary Sinise is spot-on and Ed Harris is spooky (ectoplasmically speaking, not as racial vilification.)
I haven't read the book, so I took the film on its own terms. It's a film for intelligent adults with an attention span. The acting is great. Hopkins plays a character who is tragic in the classical sense: a potentially great man with a fatal flaw (and his is a whopper). Kidman is absolutely believable, Anna Deveare Smith is heart-breaking as Silk's mother, Gary Sinise is spot-on and Ed Harris is spooky (ectoplasmically speaking, not as racial vilification.)