First Hit: Although well-acted, for the most part, it just didn’t seem believable.
From the get go I kept thinking, why didn’t someone take off their bracelet? Why didn’t someone leave the country? Where was the rebellion?
Despite the unbelievable story line, much of the acting was good and the cinematography was outstanding.
The story is basically that some children in rural England, who are said to be clones (although unproven in the film), are being raised in large homes to eventually give their internal organs up for donation. There is a sense of pride that the children, when they become old enough to donate, stay alive long enough to donate 3, 4 and even 5 times.
A smart, sensitive and big of heart young girl named Kathy (played by both Izzy Meikle-Small and Carey Mulligan) befriends a young boy (played by both Charlie Rowe and Andrew Garfield) who seems to have no athletic or art ability. Seeing Kathy befriending this young boy Kathy’s best friend Ruth (played by both Ella Purnell and Keira Knightley) decides to use her amorous nature to get the shy Tommy to be her boyfriend.
Kathy does not protest much against this move by her best friend and this is emblematic of the whole film. Why doesn’t anyone protest their life? Could the indoctrination of the school’s teachers be so oppressive that no one dares to protest? Even when the teacher Miss Lucy tells the kids that their life exists only to be the suppliers of body parts to other people, no one protests.
The only noticeable appearance that these children and young adults are being physically controlled is the metal bracelet which they wave over a box near a door entrance each time they walk in or out of their home recording their comings and goings.
Rowe and Purnell were very good as the young Tommy and Ruth respectively. However, Meikle-Small was outstanding as the young Kathy. She really shined. Mulligan as the older Kathy only makes the part work when she is playing a late 20 or early 30 year old person. Mulligan, as I’ve stated before, needs to play more chronologically correct roles for her actual age. Although she may look young, her eyes belie the age of the parts she is playing. She is too mature for them. Garfield does a good job of being Tommy, a boy and young man who is a little slow in the exterior but of beautiful heart. Knightley is OK as the mid-teen but becomes much better when she becomes the donor because there is a soulfulness she emotes which rings true for the part. Kazuo Ishiguro wrote the novel on which Alex Garfield based his adequate screenplay. I’ve not read the novel so I don’t know if the storyline problems are with the novel or adaptation. Adam Kimmel did an outstanding and superb job as cinematographer as the pictures of rural England are dead on perfect and created an outstanding reflection of the mood. Mark Romanek directed this and I wonder how it felt to film a storyline which had such a gaping hole in logic.
Overall: Outside of a hole in the storyline, the beauty of the pictures and some of the acting made this film watchable.