A disappointment

Rating: 2/10 (27 March 2008)

Unnecessarily confusing and poorly structured even though it had to have flashbacks for its Rashomon-like storytelling; this decade's 'trend' away from the chronological seems designed to hide flaws. The film's plot is really fairly simple, so the director and editor had to give far too much screen-time to certain scenes in an attempt to gloss over this fact (cinematography over substance). For example, the scene when McAvoy's character is struggling to find the right words while typing his apology, which is interspersed with Knightley's endless smoking, is excruciatingly slow. Instead of spending so much time with this point, how about letting us in on how his character received the wound to his chest? Also, while the Dunkirk sequence is an impressive technical accomplishment, it drags on almost dizzyingly and seems as if it were designed to lend a more serious subtext to the otherwise flimsy story. Along these lines, the filmmakers felt it necessary to add gratuitous hospital shots of the war wounded (and, earlier, used that "most horrible word in the world"). Of course, you have to credit them for using Vanessa Redgrave in the Titanic-like Gloria Stuart denouement, which wraps the whole thing in a prettier package than its contents.