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Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:

Summary: Does not live up to the hype
Comment: I was very disappointed with this movie. It promised much but delivered little, confusing plot, but
very well acted.
Not a film I would watch again.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Despite Keira's presence this is well worth watching
Comment: If like me, you think that Keira is very much over rated, don't be put off by her presence in this
film, her role does not make nor carry the film (I am at a loss as to why she gets such a high
billing ). The atmosphere and emotional story are brilliantly portrayed by the three actresses
playing Briony and James McAvoy playing Robbie. There is little point in repeating the plot but I
will say that the pace does not falter, the way the film knits together imagination and reality is
powerful and one certainly experiences the mental anguish felt by Briony.

Customer Rating:

Summary: All because of a four letter word....
Comment: I only really came to this film because of all the Oscar buzz around it and knowing that James
Macavoy was really good in Last King of Scotland. However, I was a bit worried about Ikea
Knightley, and so I should have been. It says something that the best bits of the film are
happening when one of the leads isn't on screen. The war imagery and the Part played by Macavoy is
excellant, its just a shame a better actress counldn't have played the Ikea role, nevermind I really
wanted to her to be good in it aswell.

Definaltey worth watching, just don't believe
all the hype.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Stunning.
Comment: This movie had me in tears, I've never been so moved by a film before.
The characters,
Cecelia, Robbie & Briony, are excellently portrayed by Keira, James and Saoirse. I would definitely
recommend to anyone, even if it's not their type of genre. It's a must-see. It's absolutely
stunning.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Oh so pretty, oh so clever - maybe too clever?
Comment: Yes, Keira Knightly (Celia) is ravishing and James McAvoy (Robbie) is studly and the child-acting
(Briony, Lola) is of a wonderful quality; the script is sharp and arch in all the right ways and the
photography is simply immaculate. I can't unsay a word of the praise that has been rightly heaped on
this film.

I was predisposing myself to dislike this film, you see - in spite of being
thoroughly seduced by the director's previous outting, the Keira vehicle Pride & Prejudice - 2005.
Dislike it why? Well, not the Edwardian setting or prim English reserve on offer. I mean, if The
Go-Between and Brideshead Revisited leave you cold, why on earth are you watching a film like this
anyway? But I adore Waugh and Hartley and Graham Greene and McEwan's novel seems to synthesise all
of them, so I positively wanted the lawns to be as clipped as Keira's vowels and wartime London to
be seedy and dystopian. No no, all of that is marvelous. I guess I just dreaded the Keira/McAvoy
love story drenching everything in syrup, pressing a lot of cinematic buttons to make us, the
viewers, like unlikeable people - you know, the way The English Patient [1996] did?

So,
surprisingly, the film had quite the opposite effect on me. I was enchanted by the central love
story, which manages just the right degree of reticence, and found myself rooting for the two,
strangely remote, protagonists. In fact, if the film has a shortcoming, it's that it's too aloof,
too clever, too stylised.

For example, in a breathtaking cinematic tour-de-force, the
evacuation of Dunkirk is introduced through a stunning tracking shot that follows Robbie and his
soldiers across the beach, past the shooting of horses and the burning of books (note: symbolism;
the novel's themes of failed communication and the destructive power of the word being illuminated),
once round the bandstand where the traumatised troops sing a baleful hymn, across the shattered
promenade with the ironic symbol of the ferris wheel rotating in the background and onto the pier
where drunken squaddies retch into the sea, only to touch upon the soldiers' hymn again, wafted to
us on the breeze.

So stunning, in fact, I had to rewind and watch it again! I was
impressed, yes, but somehow a film should wear its technical accomplishment more lightly, don't you
think? The percussive rhythm of typewriter keys that drives the soundtrack along is daring and hints
at the plot's true nature - the novelistic construction created by Briony, not a "true story" at all
- but serves somehow to rob the whole of ambiguity, rather than enhancing it.

Maybe I'm
straining at gnats while swallowing elephants. This is a beautifully shot, imaginatively constructed
and artfully acted movie, a masterclass really. If, in creating an ingenious adaptation of a
clever-clever book by a clever-clever author, it's become a little too clever-clever itself, well
who can blame it?

I was going to award this film four stars, to reflect my slight
discomfort with its overly-intellectual style and construction. Then I gave myself a pinch. For
goodness' sake, how many films can you really criticise for being intellectual while still managing
to pack an emotional punch too? Here's a film that works on every level and anyone who stays away
from it because they dislike period dramas or novelistic adaptations or stick-thin Keira is
impoverishing themselves. Bravo to movies like this - and more of them, please!

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