Keira Knightley’s sulky promotion of Atonement in the US this week reminded me I’ve not yet written up my review of the film.

I read the Ian McEwan book last year and loved it so had high hopes for the film and went to see it as soon as it came out in the UK in September.

On the whole, I enjoyed it and thought it was a reasonably faithful adaptation of the story. I liked the use of the typewriter sound behind key scenes and very much enjoyed how the different perspective aspect worked - pleasantly subtle and interesting.

I generally enjoyed the performances from the main stars - Saoirse Ronan & Romola Garai playing Briony at 13 & 18 were great and I utterly believed they were the same sour-faced girl. I also liked James McAvoy’s portrayal of Robbie - constantly holding himself back, stranded between two worlds, not fitting in with either his rich employers/benefactors or with his working class army mates. I didn’t particularly warm to Keira’s Cecilia though (not her fault, just the character lacks substance) and her accent was so clipped I found it difficult to follow at times - but I thought she and McAvoy were awesome in the library scene - a genuine laugh out loud moment.

The iconic images from the film - Keira in her wonderful green dress at the evening meal and earlier in her bathing suit & cap - looked as good on film as they had in stills but while the swooping shot of the beach at Dunkirk was impressive in terms of the amount of planning and effort that must have gone into it, something about it fell flat with me. In fact the whole section in France felt a bit disjointed. In the book, their walk to the coast seems to go on for so much longer, increasing the sense of desperation and danger, but in the film it just feels slow - sure, Robbie stumbles across the film of dead children but he seems very detached from everything. Maybe that was the point but it didn’t work for me.

I didn’t like the ending either - not the fault of the film really as I didn’t like the ending in the book either - but the film’s finale felt a lot more clumsy than the book.

Do I think it’ll get Oscar nods as many people suspect? Not for the adaptation for screen but the costumes, sound and visual aspects were great and I’ll like to see them at least get nominated. I don’t think Keira did enough of anything to get a nod but it would be sad to see Saoirse/Romola or James not even get a mention.