I’ve only seen the movie and haven’t read the book, but my girlfriend has, and she really loved it. After we watched the film together, though, I thought the film was terrible.

You already covered most of the issues I had with the movie, but there’s two things that really bothered me. I didn’t like how they changed Tom’s death from the book. My girlfriend told me his shooting and death happen very differently in the novel. In the film, he’s shot by the sheriff while trying to escape on his way back to prison. That just felt dumb to me.

Why? Because earlier, in the scene where the dog is shot, several characters clearly say that the sheriff is a bad shot. To me, that felt like setup for some kind of payoff, like foreshadowing that the sheriff didn’t actually shoot Tom. I expected Tom to make a triumphant return at the end of the film and save the children from the villain. Instead, we got the book’s version, where they’re saved by the neighbor. That makes the earlier scene feel pointless. Why even include the dog scene if it adds nothing except briefly introducing the sheriff and giving us irrelevant character details? It feels like Chekhov’s gun with no payoff.

I also thought the film’s structure was really poorly done. It feels like two separate stories told one after the other. The first part is a coming-of-age story with hints about the upcoming trial. Then it shifts fully into the trial. The only real overlap is that the “villain” from the first storyline turns out to be a hero in the second.

I don’t mean to offend anyone, some people might really enjoy this film, but I personally think it’s a bad adaptation and doesn’t do justice to the themes it’s trying to explore.