I'd like to append a bit to my initial reaction to this film.  I have
since read the interview in Mark Twain Journal and do appreciate what
the Nee brothers have to say about their goals with this film.  After a
bit of introspection on my part I must say I'm not completely in line
with their sense of film aesthetics; I do like the Coen brothers but I
find Tarantino to be a sick puppy.  What still bothers me about the
film is that Tom and Huck, as adults, still seem to adhere to a pre-
adolescent sense of values. This is how Twain found them but with Twain
they were indeed pre-adolescent. Huck did look to Tom as an authority
on the proper way to do things, but he had always managed to escape
from doing things contrary to his own heart.  Regarding Jim's escape:
Huck felt that Jim WAS going to escape despite Tom's embellishments of
style. My reading of the Tom Sawyer character was that he would have
been too intelligent to be where the Nee brother's Tom was at that age.
And, Huck was at heart a Taoist and would not be dependent on a
childhood friend for guidance.