Atonement is a very well made, if a little bit underwhelming, film that features a handful of good performances, gorgeous cinematagraphy, and a twist ending that makes up for a lot of the third-act story problems I had. I liked it a whole lot more than I thought I would. I’ve never been a big fan of period romance movies, but this one gets a whole lot right.

It all starts with the casting. James McAvoy is for sure one of the most exciting new faces in the movies. All the attention last year was paid to Forest Whitaker’s commanding, Oscar-winning performance in The Last King of Scotland, but the question I kept asking myself while watching the movie was, what about this other guy? He’s fantastic in that film, and he’s excellent here. Keira Knightley, who is doing her best work under the guidance of Joe Wright, who directed her in this and the better 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice, shows not just how beautiful she can be but also how she can act far better than what may have been expected from her based on her work in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. She is great as well here, and she and McAvoy share one of the sexiest screen sex scenes I’ve seen in a long, long time. Really, it’s what you don’t see in the scene that makes it so sexy.

The Oscar-nominated cinematography is sweeping and epic. At the same time, there is an intimate charge to a lot of the shots, some handheld, some that go in and out of focus. A shot of Knightley sitting in front of the mirror while the camera kind of bumps around is a particularly pretty shot. A long 4 or 5 minute shot later in the film that glides along a beach, showing the haunting defestation of a war gone rampant, is one of the highlights of the film. The art direction, costume design, editing, all terrific. The score might not be to everyone’s liking, with the pounding of a typewriter used as background, but it worked really well.

I prepared myself to be fairly bored with the film, but I found myself engaged for the majority of the running time. The only part that drags for me is all the material with the older Briony in her late teens. I was also disappointed to find Knightley not in very much of the second half of the film. While I was more involved with McAvoy’s character, I wanted to see more of her as well. The film culminates into a scene toward the end that is odd and a little too forced, so I was very happy to find out at the very end the truth about the nature of this scene. I was taken by surprise, and the movie was vindicated of a couple small mistakes. Terrific!

This isn’t the kind of movie I’ll ever want to watch again, but it’s a very good film nonetheless. It makes me want to seek out more work by McAvoy, and it makes me excited for what more team-ups we can expect from Wright and Knightley. These two go well together. Atonement probably won’t hold up as well on the small screen, but it’s pretty damn dazzling in a theatre. It’s not a great movie. But it’s certainly better than I expected. Joe Wright should just direct all of these kinds of movies from now on. Seriously.