Wonderful character development!

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I had never heard of this film, nor did I read anything about it on IMDb beforehand, so I had no expectations whatsoever when I sat down for it. By 20 minutes in, I was enjoying it a lot. Michelle Williams was putting on a London accent which seemed flawless to me. (Okay, I'm a Texan, what do I know about English accents?) The big event seemed to be done pretty well. The film is mainly psychological, about dealing with loss. Miss Williams does very well with this material, and indeed, her performance is the best part of the film. But when I got into the final third of the film, my enjoyment started to flag. The flashback scenes were way overdone, even though I get that it was the director's way of showing the character's break with reality. And in the end, the character's shocking naivete about the mindset of Islamic terrorists was extremely jarring. Overall, I liked the movie, but I am not sure that I could recommend it to anyone else.

This movie had great potential to present the aftermath of a terrorist attack on the common man (woman) if I could have understood anything Michelle Williams was saying. Her accent sounded authentic but was not understandable - had no problems with the men but missed most of of the narration and dialog involving her. The music either drowned her out or her voice was so soft I could not understand it.The ending was also vague - the child born could have been any one of the three mens' baby. While it was not that significant to the over all theme, it would have been kind to the viewer to clarify.Of course, in my fantasy it was Ewan MacGregor's and they lived happily ever after.

This movie so wants to be an epic drama about the failure of terrorism to stifle the human spirit in the face of mankind's determination to ... uh ... have more babies and ... uh, make uplifting music and, uh .... babies' cries drown out hate and ... uh ....I don't want to mock this well intentioned movie too much. For one thing, Michelle Williams delivers a ferocious performance as a wife and mother whose grief will not be denied.Williams is simply "young mother." She has a boy toddler and a husband on the police bomb squad who comes home exhausted every night and falls asleep in front of the TV watching his soccer team, Arsenal. One night, she tucks hubby in on the couch and goes down to the local pub. There, she meets a reporter and they click. She is sex starved. They have sex.Next day, hubby takes the boy to the stadium for an Arsenal game, giving "young mother" an opportunity for another liaison with reporter. The two liaise, and are well into sex with the TV on the Arsenal game when a terrorist bomb explodes in the stadium, killing thousands, including her husband and boy.She races to the scene. Debris falls on top of her. She wakes up in the hospital covered in lacerations. As she heals, and gets out of the hospital, she goes on a quest. She is consumed with rage and guilt.This is an incredibly good scenario to begin a movie and it has a powerful actress to carry it forward, but somewhere along the way it decides it does not want to be a thriller or a melodrama or even a conventional drama, but an inspirational Hallmarkian story about the triumph of love.OK, maybe the cries of a newborn English baby will drown out the rants of mad dog jihadists. Or, perhaps, political issues are involved. Hmmm.

Having knocked us all out in 2004 in LAND OF PLENTY by Wim Wenders, here Michelle Williams proves that she is truly supernatural. She gives one of the most gut-wrenching performances ever seen on the screen. And for a Montana gal who had to brush the sagebrush pollen out of her hair before joining polite company, stow her lasso, and pretend to be civilised, how did she manage to master the accent and rhythms and patterns of speech, dress, and mannerisms of those real savages, the gals in those short tart's skirts who live in tower blocks in East London and are married to men who support Arsenal Football Club? (Ugh! Football! Makes me sick! And singing about a football club, how oafish can you get?) It all goes to show that Williams, like good wine, travels well, even though in this case it was from planet to planet. This film is so brilliantly written and directed by Sharon Maguire (formerly a television documentary film maker) that the combination of Maguire and Williams sets the cinema on fire and thereby justifies the film's title admirably. Excellent support is had from Ewan McGregor and Matthew MacFadyen as the two male leads, but all eyes are on Williams. The production values of this film are very high, and it is easy to be convinced that the big terrorist attack on Wembley Stadium has really happened, as the attack and the aftermath are all so real. However, this is not a film about terrorism, which is merely the backdrop, in the sense that world wars and civil wars have been for so many films in the past, from GONE WITH THE WIND to FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS to MRS. MINIVER. This is a film about people, but especially about Michelle Williams. Only a woman could have directed this. In fact, one is tempted to say that all films with terrorism backgrounds should be directed by women, because they are not tempted as men are to dwell on all the violence for its own sake. With a woman at the helm, this film becomes a people film, but a man would have strayed, taken more interest in guns and corpses and explosions (little boys going bang bang sometimes never grow up, especially when they have a budget and a cameraman handed to them). As a study of searing grief and despair, Williams has our hearts in her mouth, but don't worry, it isn't really a downer, it is simply so spellbinding looking at her and seeing into another dimension. She seems to be a tiny little thing, and it is almost inconceivable that such a small package can carry such a huge explosive power. This film really is an instant contemporary classic.