Winston Smith is a government employee whose job involves the rewriting of history in a manner that casts his fictional country's leaders in a charitable light. His trysts with Julia provide his only measure of enjoyment, but lawmakers frown on the relationship -- and in this closely monitored society, there is no escape from Big Brother.

1984 doesn't fully emerge from the shadow of its source material, but still proves a solid, suitably discomfiting adaptation of a classic dystopian tale.