Customer Reviews
Deeply emotional and thoroughly compelling 
2008-07-15
So incredibly well done and very deeply touching to the heart and mind. Many unexpected twists.
A Lot of Stir 
2008-07-14
"Atonement" has pleasant moments. I didn't enjoy it very much, but I think it probably is good. Saoirse Ronan who was Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actress as the young Briony Tallis does an excellent job of creating a lot of stir. Ramola Garai takes over as Briony at age 18 and does a good job of trying to atone for her actions as a young girl. Vanessa Redgrave is excellent, albeit in a thankless role, as Briony right before her death. Redgrave has been nominated for Oscars for "Morgan!" (1966), "Isadora" (1968), "Mary Queen of Scots" (1971), "The Bostonians" (1984), and "Howard's End" (1992). She won a supporting Oscar in 1977 for "Julia." I have been watching her captivating performance in Evening. As the aging author telling this tale, she is reduced to a TV interview show format. Keira Knightly who was nominated for an Oscar for "Pride & Prejudice" in 2005 looks good. James McAvoy, who plays Robbie Turner, was nominated by the British Academy Awards & the Golden Globes for this film. He had previously been nominated for an Oscar in the powerful The Last King of Scotland (Widescreen Edition). He's always very good in his films; however "Atonement" keeps him rather boxed in emotionally, despite the excellent scenes in the war. Brenda Blethyn plays his mother Grace Turner in a nice cameo. The best performance of the film for me was in the cameo of Jeremie Renier as Luc Cornet, a French soldier who dies from a scull injury in front of Briony. It's a short but powerful performance. Belgian Renier was nominated as Best Actor by the European Film Awards for L' enfant (The Child) in which he sells his baby. In "Atonement," he is touching with his mind going between memory and the present.
My greatest disappointment with "Atonement" was the screenplay which tries to be clever by jumping back and forth with flashbacks and giving us only part of the story to be unhooked at the director's discretion. Thus, rather than just telling a fairly interesting tale, we must wonder at how clever the screenwriter was. It doesn't work and the final scenes like the flooded tunnel come as downer footnotes. If depressing cinema is your forte, get your hanky for this one. The performances and cinematography, however, are exquisite. Enjoy!
a boring Atonement 
2008-07-07
I really wanted to like this film because of the actors involved in it. James McAvoy,who was excellent in "The Last King of Scotland" & "Narnia", Keira Knightly, and Vanessa Redgrave were the lures here plus the film had received excellent reviews. However, the direction was plodding and that was a big surprise to me because I had liked Joe Wright's direction in the previous film to this, "Pride & Prejudice" also with Keira Knightley. Because of this and despite McAvoy's and Redgrave's excellent acting, I felt disengaged from the film. Also Knightley somehow lacks that "something" that made the late Audrey Hepburn magnetic and so I felt little of McAvoy's passion for her because of this. So regretfully, 2 stars which means okay but no bonnets for this very over-rated film (check out "The French Lieutenant's Woman" for comparison).
Another Jigsaw Puzzle 2008-07-06
A lot of recent movies have tried to create suspense by telling their stories in bits and pieces. Flashbacks and flash-forwards abound. With "Atonement," we get a number of these time displacements, plus we have the added fragmentation of a story sometimes told from different viewpoints, in brief imitation of "Roshomon."
The Director apparently hoped to hold our interest by making archeologists of us all, uncovering one shard after another, engaging us, challenging us to put the pieces together into the final unified piece of pottery. Half-way through though, I felt as if there might just be too many missing pieces here to warrant my continued efforts.
Another problem with the movie is that it set up false expectations. Its backdrops don't quite match its theme. The central tragedy of the film is launched in the 1930's in a large English estate taken right out of the pages of a classic Agatha Christie who-dun-it. There are long corridors and balconies, all slightly darkened, all gleaming sinisterly with polished wood. In standard Christie-style, some members of the upper-class gather here for a house party where they mingle with gardeners, butlers, and other factotums of the estate. The standard illicit love affairs, rivalries, and tensions brew among this cast of characters. All this leads the viewer to expect a neatly clipped murder in the library.
However, while there is a crime committed, and while there is some question about who did it - the mystery is not at all the sort of puzzled contrivance that we have been set up for. The viewer is all of a sudden shifted into the very much less contained, much less solvable gore of the WWII evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk. From there, we're launched onto a sea of murky moral considerations and motives.
The result is a somewhat pretentious collage of mismatched fragments that it gets a chore to relate and relate to. There might have been a good point buried here, about the inscrutability of a lot of human motivation and about how an off-the-cuff deception can lead to hugely tragic consequence. But that worthwhile theme seems to get lost in the battlefield smoke of Dunkirk.
Masterpiece 2008-07-06
I had neither read the book nor read any film review of "Atonement" before I saw it on DVD. I was aware that Ian McEwan is a celebrated modern author but little else. In short, I saw this film with absolutely no preconceived ideas.
"Atonement" is an absolutely captivating film. Initially, it seemed like an English period piece. Yet, gradually it revealed an enthralling plot. A young girl's misconstrued evidence before the police results in life changing events for the film's main characters. The backdrop is the 1930s and then the Second World War before the full story is revealed in the current day.
Keira Knightley and James McAvoy are brilliant as the lead characters. Their
two characters are the love interest of the film. Although they both come from
very different backgrounds, their attraction to each other is obvious. The outset of the film, in particular, has real sexual frisson. Their lives, however, are soon torn asunder.
At the conclusion of the film there is a wonderful cameo piece by Vanessa Redgrave. It is her character that ties up all the loose ends. And these ends are very sad indeed. I'll say no more for fear of spoiling the film for others.
"Atonement" won the Golden Globe Award for best film. This was well warranted. The film is a masterpiece.
Very high level of accomplishment from a very young director 2008-07-05
From the award-winning director of Pride and Prejudice comes a stunning critically acclaimed epic story of love. When a young girl catches her sister in a passionate embrace with a childhood friend her jealousy drives her to tell a lie that will irrevocably change the course of all their lives forever. Academy Award® nominee Keira Knightley and James McAvoy lead an all-star cast in the film critics are hailing "the year's best picture" (Thelma Adams US Weekly).System Requirements:Running Time: 123 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/LOVE & ROMANCE Rating: R UPC: 025193328526 Manufacturer No: 61033285
Great Film - Not Exactly A Chick Flick 2008-07-04
I was impressed with this film. I'm not keen on Kiera and this film did not change my impression of her. I thought McAvoy was excellent and he strikes me as the one to watch in the future. What I most liked about the film was music and the cinematography. The direction was also excellent (if somewhat unheralded) when you consider the scale of the film as being both big and intimate.
You know...I was not blown away by this. 2008-07-04
I'd heard a lot of hype about this movie, which naturally can be a bad thing at times. Briefly, as I'm sure there have been other reviews with a synopsis, this movie tells the story of a young girl who has a crush on an older man. One problem...he is involved in a romantic affair with her older sister. In a moment of jealousy she accuses him of raping an underaged cousin (the cousin goes along with this for reasons of her own). His life is ruined and he is sent to prison, her sister becomes estranged from the family and basically the whole incident brings ruin to everyone. Five years later, she comes to her senses and tries to "atone" (hence the title of the movie) for her former actions.
First the good...this is a well-acted movie. There can be no complaints for any of the major players in this film. Some of the more minor characters play British elites to stereotype, but the major players are tight and realistically done. Also, individual scenes within the movie are nicely done, played for good emotional effect.
However, the movie never really ties together well. Part of it is the "British" feel of the movie...like many British films (and television) it seems to take FOREVER to get going. If you didn't know what the plot was going in, you'll spend half an hour wondering what the hell this movie is about. The movie is never really able to shake it's looseness...even most British films come together once the plot is fully revealed and this one never does. I was left wondering after watching it why they even included many of the scenes they did...again, as individual scenes they were quite nice, but never really moved the narrative forward.
The ending has an interesting twist...but...it's only a twist because the movie "lies" to you. Not much more I can say without revealing the twist, but it's a "straw man" twist ending...one which is based on false premises and thus loses its impact once you realize the movie is simply backtracking, not revealing new information that fits into an existing narrative.
So I think, ultimately, that it's a lousy screenplay, but one which is nonetheless well acted and directed. The movie also has an annoying habit of flicking back and forth through time...sometimes this gimmic can work, but here it doesn't. There never seems to be any good reason for it. The story could have been told better with a more linear narrative.
Lastly, on the off chance anyone thinks this is a "war" movie (I think some previews teasingly hint at it)...it's not. Not a single Wehrmacht soldier shows up in the whole film. The "war" aspect of the film involves British soldiers waiting on the beach at Dunkirk, getting drunk. Remarkably even the Luftwaffe never seems to show up.
So, if the racks at Blockbuster are really thin this week, this movie might do in a clinch. But you'll have to be willing to sit through a movie with significant plot holes and disjointed narrative.
Very surprised by this movie 2008-06-30
Since I started seeing the trailers of this movie i was curious about the movie. When it came out on DVD i didn't by it or rent it, but one of my friends bought it and i borrowed it from them and surprised that i enjoyed a love story, especially since I'm a guy, but the heart ache and not ending with a happy ending, plus the war scenes being brutally honest pry made it that much better for me, but i was amazed that i was feeling for the characters, and wishing that the two lovers would be together. A movie not for everyone but i loved it that i had to buy the book to see how closely they got the movie, i defiantly recommend if your a guy and your girlfriend wants to watch a love story, you the guy will get something out of it too.
Pseudo-Atonement.... 
2008-06-29
Guys -- if you sat through this with your wives or girlfriends (hopefully not both), they owe you TWO movies with exploding cars or Vin Diesel to "atone" for the experience! Other random observations:
James McAvoy must have a clone. I think that one out of every three movies made nowadays stars McAvoy. The guy must be the hardest working man in show business. Has he figured out the cloning thing, because he seems ubiquitous.
Cut the smoke! If you watch Hollywood movies, you would surmise that 90% of the population smokes cigarettes. What's up with that? It's a lie.
If you had not been briefed on the movie's plot, it might be very confusing. Read up first.
Say What?! The velly British dialogue is hard to decipher at times. I confess I switched on the English subtitles to help follow the dialogue.
The movie is visually arresting. I loved the scene on the beach evacuation (Dunkirk) when the soldiers were singing a hymn; also the later scene with Briony in the hospital wards with Debussy's "Claire de Lune" in the background.
So writing a fictional piece is some kind of atonement for ruining the lives of the characters? Oh please! That is no "atonement" at all. Writing some fanciful account of how these two lovers could have otherwise turned out does not expiate or atone for the lie perpetrated by Briony.
That is why I view this as "Pseudo-Atonement."
