BOTTOM LINE: Long-winded and mis-directed period drama which despite its best intentions, great acting and solid ideas, never really comes together to drive its point home.

THE GOOD: Atonement starts off with the titles being literally typed on screen by a typewriter. This plays in to the main theme of the supposedly central character of Briony Tallis who is writing her first play. Through the first act, 13-year old Briony tells an astonishing lie (fuelled by jealously because of an unrealised crush) that their house-keeper's son Robbie (James McAvoy) raped her cousin in the bushes one night when in fact it was the rich friend of her brother. As a result, Robbie is sent away to prison and later to serve in the army during WW2. Robbie and Cecelia (Keira Knightley) were secretly in love and as a result of her sister Briony's actions, Cecelia is split from Robbie, and Robbie is forced to endure a painful life sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. Starting from this strong basis, the film covers some very strong themes and ideas about what happened to the relationships and their responsibilities to each other. 'Atonement' also includes some very flashy techniques, including moments where it goes backwards and forwards in time to follow the same moments from the points of view of different characters, different uses of the typewriter (sound, picture etc) as Briony comes to terms with what she did and how she came to write about it, and some spectacular imagery. There's one shot when Robbie is at war; an uncut steadicam shot which lasts for about five minutes which has to be one of the most impressively staged sequences, not to mention complicated ever staged (although 'Snake Eyes' and 'The Player' probably top it). The film also ends in a rather odd and an unexpected way that could very well have made it a unique and brilliant film, basically suggesting that what we've seen has all come out of Briony's typewriter rather than being real. However...

THE BAD: The film is just not served well but its script, and as a result, the direction. The first act, which really should have just been about 10 minutes long is bloated out to 30 minutes and doesn't really sustain that length of time. The next 30 minutes are not much better as we follow Robbie through the WW2 sequences. This is supposed to be a film about Briony's atonement for her sin yet half the film isn't even focused on her! It's quite clearly Briony's story; however, after the first five minutes or so, the story follows Cecelia and Robbie directly, with Robbie's war story taking the film far away from Briony. In fact, Robbie's war story doesn't contain anything except for him pining for his lost love which after a while becomes very tedious. And then it shifts back to Briony in the second half of the film. She is then played by two new actresses and to make sure we don't get confused as an audience, the filmmakers chose to keep her with the same haircut for her entire life. And what does she do to atone for her sins? She writes a book where Cecelia and Robbie have a happy ending. She admits she had no courage to ever face Cecelia again and on top of that both Cecelia and Robbie died before they could get back together again. Knowing all that, this ending is just plain obnoxious, especially as the character of Briony really doesn't show in the end that she's sorry for what she did.