Review of Atonement (2007) by Abigail O — 06 Aug 2011

A beautiful but pointless film. None of the characters were in any way sympathetic. And it's all about this "grand quest" that the WW2 soldier is on to find the girl, and *spoilers* he doesn't even manage it! He dies of thirst and wounds on a beach instead like the big jessy he is.

And there are three people playing the same girl, from childhood to teen years to old ladyhood, and these three actors have PATENTLY DIFFERENT EYE COLOURS. Didn't that piss anyone else off? And there's a scene in a library that's very unnecessary and leaves very little to the imagination.

You're supposed to care about the love affair between Miss Snootypants Duckfaced Keira Knightley and Roughty Toughty son-of-servants James McEvoy, but she's just so toffee nosed and stuck-up that you think "I don't care".

The only interesting scenes involved the Comedy Cockerney character played by that gap-toothed actor whose name I can't remember but he was the hard case son of Saddam Hussein in one series, anyway, and also the scene on the beach where the soldiers are singing a lovely hymn.

And there's a tacked on sort-of happy ending which is then utterly undermined when Professor MacGonagall comes on in flashforward and admits she made the whole thing up cos her sister and the-man-she-wronged had snuffed it by then anyway.

That's not cricket, making things up about supposedly real characters. Just because they're not there to avenge themselves. That might have been a fun ending, duck-faced apparitions coming out of the walls to terrify Professor McGonagall to death.

And this film needed at least ten more exploding helicopters.