Atonement (Widescreen Edition) | 
 enlarge | Actors: Keira Knightley, James Mcavoy, Saoirse Ronan, Brenda Blethyn, Harriet Walter
Studio: Universal Studios
Category: DVD
List Price: $29.98
Buy Used: $6.92
You Save: $23.06 (77%)
New (57) Used (46) from $6.92
Rating:  224 reviews
Sales Rank: 290
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Dubbed), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 130 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.5
MPN: 61033285
UPC: 025193328526
EAN: 0025193328526
ASIN: B0013XZ6X4
Theatrical Release Date: January 4, 2008
Release Date: March 18, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Original box art. Disc in good condition with minor scratches. Gladly ships to APO?s and FPO?s. Ex-rental
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Product Description
From the award-winning director of Pride and Prejudice comes a stunning critically acclaimed epic story of love. When a young girl catches her sister in a passionate embrace with a childhood friend her jealousy drives her to tell a lie that will irrevocably change the course of all their lives forever. Academy Award nominee Keira Knightley and James McAvoy lead an all-star cast in the film critics are hailing "the year's best picture" (Thelma Adams US Weekly).System Requirements:Running Time: 123 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/LOVE & ROMANCE Rating: R UPC: 025193328526 Manufacturer No: 61033285
Amazon.com
Director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice) gives Ian McEwan's bestselling novel a sumptuous treatment for the screen that should come to be regarded as one of the defining films of the epic romantic drama. Indeed, everything about this film stems from those three words: there is little here that is not epic, romantic, and dramatic, and Atonement is a film that masterfully expresses the overarching sense of adventure and emotion that such stories are meant to convey. In this instance, the story centers around the love story of highborn Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley) and housekeeper's son Robbie Turner (James McAvoy, in a star-making turn), in England shortly before World War II. Despite their class differences, they are powerfully attracted to each other, and just as their relationship begins Robbie is tragically forced away due to false accusations from Cecilia's younger sister Briony (Saoirse Ronan). She has a crush on Robbie, too, and after reading a private letter he sent to Cecilia, and then witnessing the first expression of their mutual love but mistaking it for mistreatment, her resentment grows until it leads to her telling the lie that will send Robbie away. Soon World War II breaks out; Robbie enlists and is posted to France, Cecilia is a nurse in London, and Briony, now age 18 and aware of what she has done, tries to atone for her actions--but none of them will be able to get back what they have lost. Knightley and McAvoy are perfectly cast as the young star crossed lovers, and the young Ronan is particularly impressive, but it's clear that the real star of this film is the director. Wright allows Atonement to revel in every moment of its story and each scene is compelling in its own way, but that now famous extended shot with Robbie on the beach at Dunkirk--filmed in one take and sure to be considered one of the great long tracking shots in film history--is the most memorable moment in this remarkable film. Atonement is an excellent example of what can happen when a great book meets great filmmaking. This is one that is not to be missed. --Daniel Vancini
Stills from Atonement (click for larger image).
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| Customer Reviews: Read 219 more reviews...
 a boring Atonement July 7, 2008
Dennis W. Wong
I really wanted to like this film because of the actors involved in it. James McAvoy,who was excellent in "The Last King of Scotland" & "Narnia", Keira Knightly, and Vanessa Redgrave were the lures here plus the film had received excellent reviews. However, the direction was plodding and that was a big surprise to me because I had liked Joe Wright's direction in the previous film to this, "Pride & Prejudice" also with Keira Knightley. Because of this and despite McAvoy's and Redgrave's excellent acting, I felt disengaged from the film. Also Knightley somehow lacks that "something" that made the late Audrey Hepburn magnetic and so I felt little of McAvoy's passion for her because of this. So regretfully, 2 stars which means okay but no bonnets for this very over-rated film (check out "The French Lieutenant's Woman" for comparison).
 Another Jigsaw Puzzle July 6, 2008
R. Schultz (Chicago)
A lot of recent movies have tried to create suspense by telling their stories in bits and pieces. Flashbacks and flash-forwards abound. With "Atonement," we get a number of these time displacements, plus we have the added fragmentation of a story sometimes told from different viewpoints, in brief imitation of "Roshomon."
The Director apparently hoped to hold our interest by making archeologists of us all, uncovering one shard after another, engaging us, challenging us to put the pieces together into the final unified piece of pottery. Half-way through though, I felt as if there might just be too many missing pieces here to warrant my continued efforts.
Another problem with the movie is that it set up false expectations. Its backdrops don't quite match its theme. The central tragedy of the film is launched in the 1930's in a large English estate taken right out of the pages of a classic Agatha Christie who-dun-it. There are long corridors and balconies, all slightly darkened, all gleaming sinisterly with polished wood. In standard Christie-style, some members of the upper-class gather here for a house party where they mingle with gardeners, butlers, and other factotums of the estate. The standard illicit love affairs, rivalries, and tensions brew among this cast of characters. All this leads the viewer to expect a neatly clipped murder in the library.
However, while there is a crime committed, and while there is some question about who did it - the mystery is not at all the sort of puzzled contrivance that we have been set up for. The viewer is all of a sudden shifted into the very much less contained, much less solvable gore of the WWII evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk. From there, we're launched onto a sea of murky moral considerations and motives.
The result is a somewhat pretentious collage of mismatched fragments that it gets a chore to relate and relate to. There might have been a good point buried here, about the inscrutability of a lot of human motivation and about how an off-the-cuff deception can lead to hugely tragic consequence. But that worthwhile theme seems to get lost in the battlefield smoke of Dunkirk.
 Masterpiece July 6, 2008
Andrew Desmond (Neutral Bay, NSW Australia)
I had neither read the book nor read any film review of "Atonement" before I saw it on DVD. I was aware that Ian McEwan is a celebrated modern author but little else. In short, I saw this film with absolutely no preconceived ideas.
"Atonement" is an absolutely captivating film. Initially, it seemed like an English period piece. Yet, gradually it revealed an enthralling plot. A young girl's misconstrued evidence before the police results in life changing events for the film's main characters. The backdrop is the 1930s and then the Second World War before the full story is revealed in the current day.
Keira Knightley and James McAvoy are brilliant as the lead characters. Their
two characters are the love interest of the film. Although they both come from
very different backgrounds, their attraction to each other is obvious. The outset of the film, in particular, has real sexual frisson. Their lives, however, are soon torn asunder.
At the conclusion of the film there is a wonderful cameo piece by Vanessa Redgrave. It is her character that ties up all the loose ends. And these ends are very sad indeed. I'll say no more for fear of spoiling the film for others.
"Atonement" won the Golden Globe Award for best film. This was well warranted. The film is a masterpiece.
Very high level of accomplishment from a very young director July 5, 2008
Michael K. Smith (Gonzales, Louisiana)
To put it simply, this is an amazing film, wrenching, mesmerizing, beautiful, and painful, alternating poetry and brutality. It's a story of self-righteous misunderstanding and unreliable narration (on several levels), in which the events an overly impressionable young girl witnesses lead to the destruction of two lives -- three, if you count her own life. And, like the book, the ending, in which Briony, now on the verge of death, tells the interviewer the truth she couldn't quite tell in her novel (she's not really very brave), is upsetting and painful as well. There are no clean endings in real life. The screenplay is beautifully written, and extremely close to the novel -- closer than I would have thought possible, in fact. Keira Knightley is very good as Cecelia, though she doesn't really get a chance to emote in this role, Cecelia being a rather closed-off sort of person. James McAvoy nails the part of Robbie Hunter, unjustly imprisoned on Briony's testimony and the victim of class differences -- especially in the scenes in northern France, after the bitter years of imprisonment have taken their toll. But Saoirse Ronan turns in the best work in the film as the thirteen-year-old Briony. Romola Garai is pretty good, too, as Briony at eighteen, and Vanessa Redgrave is competent in her brief section as the aging Briony. I can't think of another film in which the same character at three widely different ages, played by three actresses, has been so well developed. There's even a considerable physical resemblance among them. This is a far from light-hearted romance, or even a standard war story, and you won't forget it for a long, long time.
Great Film - Not Exactly A Chick Flick July 4, 2008
paul k (Whitby, Ontario Canada)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was impressed with this film. I'm not keen on Kiera and this film did not change my impression of her. I thought McAvoy was excellent and he strikes me as the one to watch in the future. What I most liked about the film was music and the cinematography. The direction was also excellent (if somewhat unheralded) when you consider the scale of the film as being both big and intimate.
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