Film Review - Their Finest (12A)

We need a story to inspire a nation.

It's refreshing amid the current slew of Hollywood genre movies to see a British film with a flavour all its own. Their Finest is a wartime comedy-drama that pretty much succeeds on both those fronts, not least due to its sharply-honed dialogue. And that's fitting - the heroine is a screen-writer and the film's main theme the power of the written (to-be-spoken) word.

Gemma Arterton plays Catrin Cole, a Welsh secretary drafted in by the Ministry of Information during World War Two, to write the so-called 'slop', i.e. women's dialogue in the propaganda films of the time. There she must deal with caustic attitude of fellow-writer Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin) and the chauvinism of the studio, while pitching a story for the inspiring feature they want to make. Her big idea: real-life twin sisters who set out in their father's fishing boat for Dunkirk during its evacuation. Lined up for a character part in their film is washed-up actor Ambrose Hilliard (Bill Nighy), a one-time leading man none too eager to embrace his unflattering role.

Their Finest is a movie of numerous strengths. For a start it looks magnificent. Blitz-ravaged London streets, Tube station bomb-shelters and Whitehall antechambers are all realised in the kind of detail at which Brit period dramas excel. The dialogue is much to which the wartime writing team aspire - smart, incisive and funny. And the story teases out multiple fascinating themes, from the manipulation of truth in shaping a narrative, to women's wartime emancipation and male resistance to it. Plus the comedy is tempered by persistent aerial bombardment, a sense of threat hanging literally above it.

Of course the primary aim is to entertain and on this the cast deliver. Arterton shines gently and steadily as 'Mrs Cole', her mild exterior belying a growing toughness of spirit. Star-in-the-ascendant Claflin is an enjoyable source of sardonic wit, and Rachael Stirling impresses as an openly feminist Ministry employee with a sharp tongue and sharper mind. But if this is anyone's finest hour, it's Nighy's. He's already built up a huge reserve of good favour with cinema-goers and here he trades on it to the full, as the precious but ultimately loveable fading actor. It's Bill at his Nighy-est and he snags most of the laugh-out-loud moments shamelessly.

If the film has one flaw it's one for which Catrin would have her screen-writing knuckles rapped. 'Too long', she's told of her early script attempts. 'Lose half.' The pacing of Their Finest is sluggish at times in its execution, but it doesn't need to lose anywhere near as much as fifty per cent. Ten/fifteen minutes' worth of hard editing would sharpen the whole piece. 

There's much to relish here even so, not least the manner in which the film-within-a-film comes together and how Catrin fights for female heroism to be represented within it. Whether or not our intrepid wartime propagandists make a film to stir the national blood I'll let you find out for yourself. Their Finest isn't quite that of British cinema - but it's still pretty damn fine.