Atonement (2007)

Why so much hype?

Perfect cast and a good story

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The first must-see film of the year.

A pure joy - sincere, pure and sensitive story about how one lie changes lives, how love fights it's way and how guilt rips apart.

Just one defect is the movie is not fluent. Except this, I can tell that the movie was completely nice with the acting and the cast. I felt the tragedy deep inside. I believe that if a movie makes me feel any kind of feelings is the one tracer thing.

Stylish visuals, smart performances, neat direction, excellent classy Music score, 'Atonement' has it all but, what about the writing? According to the Academy and certain critics, this is class stuff – yet looking at a very large quantity of the viewer's comments, it seems they were more readily able to see the lack of believable story elements and situations contained within. Not many likable characters to help you connect with these, at times, one dimensional folk - who live their lives more like a group of yr 2000 HBO yuppie types - than the 1930s personalities they're supposed to be portraying. This good looking movie with its interesting title - tends yet again to prove that the current folk who make up our movie analyzers and judges of award worthy product, might be sadly lacking any practical understanding of decent writing. Don't look too hard at the details within this work or you may find yourself questioning the wisdom of the somewhat, over-the-top raves dished out to this, "could have been" but, "sadly is not" such a good story. There are some moments of high emotional impact during the latter half's war years and the performers play it all for real but, overall this ends up being for the easily pleased or lovers of big glossy productions, with more set dressing than real character or attention to fine details.

Looks like I'm one of the few out there that was not a fan of the movie. While I think the acting was superb, the sets and locations were stunning and visually appealing, the sound track was wonderful, the style of the movie was not to my liking. The movie is written in snippets, telling a story, then back filling it in. It continues to do this throughout the entire length of the movie, and I found it at times hard to follow and cumbersome. I don't believe the actual story line made itself known until about and 1 1/2 hours into the movie, and I was disappointed in how it wrapped itself up. I didn't hate it, but won't be keeping it on my list of movies to re-watch.