The director works on an intimate scale, resulting in a "generous and touching film that is essentially smaller than its own sweeping ambitions, a crowded and skillfully drawn landscape" (Janet Maslin).

An investment banker who became chairman of Deutsche Bank in May 1997, he soon scaled back on the sweeping ambitions of his predecessor, Hilmar Kopper.

The critical consensus is: "It isn't as emotionally involving as it should be, but this Peter Weir epic offers sweeping ambition and strong performances to go with its grand visual spectacle."

As Octavian Nothing, escaped from slavery, joins up with British forces in Boston, his story encompasses both the comic and the tragic with sweeping ambition.

In it the highway links sweeping literary ambition and local interest, lyrical and documentary photography, portraiture and the urban landscape.

Those are sweeping ambitions, which are only fitfully realized in the museum's permanent exhibits; the tendency to "promote" often eclipses the goals to explain and explore.

Mr. Gates has not returned with sweeping ambitions of transforming the department.

Reagan ran for president in 1980 on the notion that the common good would be best served if the federal government scaled back its sweeping ambitions and left the thinking to the locals.

It results in a generous and touching film that is essentially smaller than its own sweeping ambitions, a crowded and skillfully drawn landscape from which no oversize figures emerge.

To those who have crossed business swords with him, Mr. Vergara's quick fortune and sweeping ambitions are cause for suspicion.