Editor Reviews:

Description:
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).

Amazon.com:
Director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice) gives Ian McEwan’s bestselling novel a sumptuous treatment for the screen that should come to be regarded as one of the defining films of the epic romantic drama. Indeed, everything about this film stems from those three words: there is little here that is not epic, romantic, and dramatic, and Atonement is a film that masterfully expresses the overarching sense of adventure and emotion that such stories are meant to convey. In this instance, the story centers around the love story of highborn Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley) and housekeeper’s son Robbie Turner (James McAvoy, in a star-making turn), in England shortly before World War II. Despite their class differences, they are powerfully attracted to each other, and just as their relationship begins Robbie is tragically forced away due to false accusations from Cecilia’s younger sister Briony (Saoirse Ronan). She has a crush on Robbie, too, and after reading a private letter he sent to Cecilia, and then witnessing the first expression of their mutual love but mistaking it for mistreatment, her resentment grows until it leads to her telling the lie that will send Robbie away. Soon World War II breaks out; Robbie enlists and is posted to France, Cecilia is a nurse in London, and Briony, now age 18 and aware of what she has done, tries to atone for her actions--but none of them will be able to get back what they have lost. Knightley and McAvoy are perfectly cast as the young star crossed lovers, and the young Ronan is particularly impressive, but it’s clear that the real star of this film is the director. Wright allows Atonement to revel in every moment of its story and each scene is compelling in its own way, but that now famous extended shot with Robbie on the beach at Dunkirk--filmed in one take and sure to be considered one of the great long tracking shots in film history--is the most memorable moment in this remarkable film. Atonement is an excellent example of what can happen when a great book meets great filmmaking. This is one that is not to be missed. --Daniel Vancini

Stills from Atonement (click for larger image).

Rating : - Hiss!! Boo!! Laughably Overrated & Boring Film
Wow, if Atonement is the "Best Picture" of 2007, then Hollywood was really scraping the bottom of the barrel for candidates. After hearing about all of the accolades received by "Atonement", my wife and I decided to rent this film and give it a shot. After all, anything voted "Best Picture" has got to be pretty decent. Right? Um, yeah. I guess we were wrong. I have now completely lost all respect and regard for some of these so-called "professional movie critics". Atonement is painfully slow-moving, with dull characters and a complete lack of the dramatic. By the time we reached the mid-way point, this movie had lost me completely and I found myself wishing that it would just end already.

Some people out there would surely accuse me of needing to be spoon-fed nothing but action, violence, and gore. Nonsense. Try watching the movie "Amadeus", which is one of my favorite movies of all time and achieves a wonderfully dramatic and moving storyline without the use of such bells and whistles. Truly a masterpiece of filmmaking and storytelling. None of this is to be found in "Atonement", which is simply 130 minutes of crust. There is a fine line between character/story development, and simply nothing happening outside of boring and pointless dialogue. Atonement falls into the latter of the two categories.

I'm sorry, but adding a WWII theme and dragging the story out to a 2+ hour run time does not simply result in an "epic" film, nor does it put the film into the same category as "Titanic", or even a "Pearl Harbor". Clearly the makers of Atonement were shooting for this type of result (Historic theme + Love = great movie) but this film fails on so many fronts, and is laughably overrated.