the audience applauded

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This is an adaptation of a play by David Mamet which he also directs. Unusually it does not feature con artists, a favourite area that Mamet likes to re-visit.The film where a family wants to clear the name of their almost 14 year old boy who has been dismissed from the naval academy for stealing a postal order is all about performances, there is very little visual trickery but good use id made of sets, lighting, music and direction. The actors are very much at the fore of the performance with Jeremy Northam as the Barrister delivering the goods as someone who believes in the boy's innocence but seems distant and uninvolved. In some cases he got the role of the barrister in the pre World War 2 era very much spot on. Its all about the law and proving your case.Nigel Hawthorne does well as the father of the family who might be on the edge of financial ruin as he fights to clear his son's name. It might be viewed the Hawthorne would be too old to play a father of a 14 year old lad although his other children are older.Rebecca Pidgeon who in other roles comes across as uninspired especially when she plays tough Americans is more comfortable here as the radical sister of the accused who also suffers loss as her engagement is broken because of the fight to clear her brother's name.Its a brave undertaking to adapt a Rattigan play on the screen and Mamet has done very well in making the film watchable and highlighting the mores of the time.

A drawing room, period, study of manners, domestic drama, if you will... The drama is admittedly light, centring on the impact of a teenage son's expulsion from naval college and the truth or otherwise of this occurrence. Strangely enough, you never get to learn whether the boy was actually guilty or not of his "crime" - although he gets off, it's never fully resolved and could be attributed to the superior advocacy of his attorney - sadly still a predilection in modern society. However the dramatic content could have been increased with some kind of courtroom climax, or confession, but now I'm arguing with the original play, hardly the fault of David Mamet or his actors. The Edwardian, pre War "golden - era" is nicely evoked with the big house, coterie of servants and upper - class manners of the family, although contemporary influences such as suffragetism (strongly) and the approaching war (mildly) are referred to. I'm not sure Mamet properly and fully brought home the "sensational" aspect of the Winslow case on the British public, even as I appreciated his subtlety in demonstrating this via newspaper hoardings, contemporary cartoons and the like. He does however marshall his acting troupe well. Nigel Hawthorne shines as the patriarch who sacrifices the wants and needs of his wider family for the sake of clearing his son's name. I didn't get the impression that it was the family name he was defending and genuinely believe it was for his youngest son's future which concerned him, which is as it should be. I'm not quite sure however that Hawthorne seems just too old to have fathered the boy. The rest of the cast play very well although some of their roles seem stereotypical and perhaps more could have been made of the interfamily tensions...but again that takes us back to Rattigan's source material. Mamet this time, quite rightly eschews all opportunity to contemporise the play and his cinematic devices are subtly reined in, no overlapping dialogue or sharp cross-cutting here. I liked the utilisation of the swinging garden gate at the start of the film, letting in the "bad" from outside, which recalled to mind J.B. Priestley's "An Inspector Calls". How often English dramatists seemed to write about the so called idyllic society of the upper classes breaking down...nothing lasts forever it seems. Anyway, in summary, a wordy piece, well shot, well played but ultimately probably best enjoyed as a stage play.

Good reviews, and seeing that David Mamet wrote the screenplay and directed, made me to see this film so I rented it and, of course, was disappointed. In a nutshell, it was boring and it feature a very annoying lead character in "Catherine Winslow" (Rebecca Pidgeon). Her feminist agenda was a little too strong to swallow, like Kate Winslet's super-irritating role in "The Titanic." It's not a bad film, just not interesting enough and one of those movies that after an hour, you realize you don't care about any of the major characters.One thing I did appreciate: the dry humor. In fact, it was refreshingly dry. (I've always appreciate sarcasm, unless it's too strong against by beliefs, of course!) It's also a period costume film, set in the early 1900s, an era I like.One question: why wasn't this the courtroom drama it was supposed to be? Instead, we get all this feminist agenda and stupid romance between two idiots. Also, it's supposed to also center around the title - the Winslow boy. Where was he? He took a backseat, far back in this stagy yawner. Mamet's "Hannibal," "The Spanish Prisoner," and "Ronin" are all far superior work to this one.

If you're fond of good dialogs, good acting and good movies...go and rent this one. I didn't expect much when I rented it, and it was a big surprise. I don't know if this movie would work that well with a different cast, but they seem to be made to be part of it. I've read some bad comments about Rebecca Pigeon but in my opinion she's perfect for the part, she acts natural. I didn't find anything that I didn't like, which is something difficult to say about most of the movies.Summarizing, this movie confirms that with a few exceptions, David Mamet keeps giving us something interesting in every movie. Before this one I had only seen The Spanish prisoner,