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Created Feb 05, 2008 02:24AM PST • Edited Jul 28, 2017 06:44PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Hardly a chick flick, though focused predominantly on a doomed love affair and populated largely by talkative females, Atonement delivers its real wallop when it goes to war, offering a stunning battle scene not out of place in the first rank of war movies.

   A legitimate Best Picture candidate, Atonement unrolls one dizzyingly great scene after another, all connected via a tragic romantic mystery that pops at the end like a literary Sixth Sense.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   A little Keira Knightly goes a long way, and she’s on screen a bit much in this picture. Still, the woman has a face for the ages and she can in fact act. James McAvoy convincingly plays the romantic leading man, fulfilling the promise he showed as Idi Amin’s doctor in The Last King of Scotland.

   Vanessa Redgrave, as the world’s worst little sister grown old, handily proves what a really great British actress can do with even the smallest role.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Perfect 5.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    This is a great film, deserving of its Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction and Best Picture Oscar nominations. Joe Wright, the Director, is a name to remember.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Very Good 3.5

    Massie so hated the surprise ending that he damned the entire movie. I see his point, but felt the story’s contrivances – including the twist at the end – worked well, rewarding careful watching from earlier. Story aside, the dialogue was a bit too romance-novel precious for me.

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    The tracking shots were gaudy good. The one from the battlefield beach of Dunkirk has gotten the most notice, but there were plenty of others worth noting, including several that effectively conveyed the extreme grandeur of the estate where the upper crust sisters were raised.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.9

    The sex was notably discrete, even British in its stiff-upper-lip reserve.

17. Sex Titillating 1.7

18. Violence Fierce 2.4

    Hellish war is effectively shown.

19. Rudeness Salty 1.7

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.4

23. Biological Glib 1.2

24. Physical Natural 1.0