Doesn't live up to the hype

Rating: 5/10 (7 January 2008)

I was prepared to love "Atonement," but I came away very disappointed. The film failed in two basic ways: 1) None of the characters were intrinsically likable or endearing. The only one I felt any sympathy for was the 18-year old Briony, because she was truly suffering and could find no way out. But neither of the two protagonists grabbed me in any way. Their love was never made credible or plausible, we never got to see any of the reasons why Keira's character would fall in love with that guy, aside perhaps from the hot weather and the dreariness of the other available men. But that's hardly enough to keep her love at white-hot pitch for years afterwards.
2) So many of the key incidents are so utterly improbable, that one cannot take the plot seriously at all. Take the incident with the flower vase: they live in this huge mansion, they're obviously filthy rich, and the girl is distraught over breaking one silly ceramic piece? And even if she was, wouldn't she just call a servant to go dredge up the broken piece, rather than diving into the water herself? Or sending a 13-year old out in the dark, alone, to search for the missing twins; who would ever do that? If this were more of a fantasy story, I'd be more accommodating, but this was clearly presented as gritty reality.
The film-making is good, but even that had some annoying qualities. It seemed like so many shots were close-ups, I felt nauseatingly oppressed by the sheer size of the images. The whole typewriter-as-percussion-instrument idea was cute the first time, but it lost its novelty after about the third instance. The first portion of the movie reminded me a lot of a Poirot episode, except without the grace and charm. The English are all snobs, upper crust with genteel manners but horrible people at the core, and there is no one of any value you can cling to. The Dunkirk scenes were quite impressive, and the reality of nursing life during the war was equally intense.
And I have to say, of all Keira's major roles thus far, this is easily her least likable. Maybe it's all that smoking, you almost feel like coughing by the end.