One question: What if Robbie hadn't gone to prison?

Rating: 2/10 (8 August 2009)

Answer: Able-bodied Robbie would doubtless have found himself in the army anyway, and at the front even sooner. And that is what makes this contrived story ring so false-- that, and even worse stupidity:
The fact is, far from causing Robbie's death, the false testimony of young Briony would actually have saved his life if he'd opted to stay safely in prison, where he could have fought his conviction, perhaps even persuading her to recant after she had apparently matured into an empathic adult (she's a war nurse). Instead, he enlists in the army, only to croak at Dunkirk exactly one (one!) day before the evacuation, because god forbid this over-reaching melodrama leaves any tears unjerked.
Oh, and by the way, since Briony's sister Cecilia dies in the Blitz, it isn't as if sis and Robbie were going to be reunited anyway.
And another thing (I loathed this movie, are you getting that?): Maybe I missed it, but at any point does Briony attempt to clear Robbie's name? Her book doesn't--it's fiction, not memoir. To her way of thinking, of course, it's probably a question of, why bother since Robbie is so conveniently dead, and I'd be the only one who suffers.
Selfish and vain as a child, Briony is guilty of causing Robbie's imprisonment. But as bad as that misdeed was, it was the act of a juvenile and the tragedies that ensue have more to do with poor adult responses and a little thing called World War II than with a self-centered little girl. Her real sins-- the chronic faults she takes into adulthood-- are egocentricity and opportunism: She capitalizes on her juvenile lie by exploiting the story as a novel, yet again falsifying facts, this time to give the lovers a happy ending. It's SO much easier, after all, to apologize in fiction rather than in reality. She manages to keep the spotlight on herself throughout, of course, and eventually turns into Vanessa Redgrave on a book tour. The end. Thank god.
"Atonement"? There's none in this movie, but plenty is owed by director Wright, screenwriter Hampton, and especially by the phenomenally overrated novelist Ian McEwan.