Hmm, Not Bad But Not Brilliant...

Rating: 6/10 (8 February 2008)

A previous reviewer mentioned the shift between the first hour and the remainder and I agree. While beautifully shot, and after some excellent tension-building scenes, the rest of the movie seemed to be making earnest attempts at resolving the plot lines but never really did; perhaps because they weren't in the novel. I don't know because I haven't read the novel and probably won't. I can't gush at the performances of the two leads because they never did convince me, unlike Saoirse Ronan, who played the young Briony, and Romola Garai, as the 18 year old Briony. Although this character was the villain of the piece I found I had far more interest in her, and sympathy for her, than for James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. I think their difficulty was in building characterizations out of sparse script material, and the result was a pastiche of clichés lifted out of films like Gosford Park, and similar depicting the English upper-class pre-war period. Once James McEvoy was taken away by the police, the film lost cohesion and became a series of scenes, again beautifully photographed, but never coming together to provide a sense of unity.
The Dunkirk scene, as cinematically impressive as it is, left me thinking it was there to compensate for the lack of plot development. After I'd marveled at the continuous shot along the beach, the planning and choreography that had gone into it, the brilliant set design, I really had to ask for the sake of the story 'And...the point here is?" Things pick up again back in war-torn London, with Romola Garai, as the 18 year old Briony atoning for her crime by becoming a nurse, but just when I was being pulled back into the story, which had always really been about this character, we get a rather confusing scene with Keira and James and and an even more confusing appearance by Vanessa Redgrave who portrays Briony as an old woman, the author of the novel that tells this whole story. She tries to explain that she fictionalized the lovers' reunion because, well, she could... but in fact they both died apart...and that's the movie.
Maybe this is the kind of movie that should have a crawler along the bottom of the screen saying "This is a very, very sensitive film..." just to remind us not to go expecting a larger and more satisfying experience.