Dave Calhoun

Directed by Gillies MacKinnon, this new version lacks the mischief of the original and feels like a sluggish museum piece.

Burton lets Waltz run wild, sucking the air out of every scene with his hysterics, and the always-endearing Adams is left looking like a rabbit in the headlights.

There are scenes that grab – Abrahams’s dash round Trinity quad; the chats between Gielgud and Lindsay Anderson as dons who dress up prejudice in fine words. But the parallel stories tend to cancel out, rather than complement, each other. Oddly, for a film about triumph over adversity, there’s nothing as uplifting as the opening and closing jogs along a windswept beach.

Sentimental and shallow, although just passable as a kids’ movie.

The elements are all in place – superb acting (lead actor Konstantin Lavronenko won the best actor prize at Cannes in 2007), masterly camerawork, an ethereal score, ghostly locations – but the problem is that the story never really connects.

There are rousing landscape shots, a fair amount of bone-crunching, and a dash of brooding patriotism – and a welcome attempt to look at history from the view of ordinary folk – but the storytelling is downbeat and basic.