canniballife-78396

Subtitled "Olivia Colman Goes for the Oscar Again".

It is a very nuanced and persuasive performance - but only half the story belongs to her - the actress who plays her as a younger woman is also powerful and effective - while Dakota Johnson is basically a body and big eyes (it helps your career so much when your daddy is well known in the movie business).

One of Neflix's "must see" but there are issues are:

• Subtext as text. We get hints about important things, but then the images go back to sea and surf - it's like touching a hot stove - they can't focus on the heat - a problem with both the script and the direction.

• Is it a thriller or not? They can't seem to decide.

• The character of Leda is very muddled. Some women should not be mothers? Is that the point? But there are plenty of details that contradict that. And, if it's true that some women are not equipped for the job, what should we do about it? Legislation? Peer pressure? A better system of orphanages?

As a father of two, I get it - kids take everything from you, and there's no guarantee that they'll ever give anything back.

But there's nothing original about that insight.

In conclusion, it's gratifying that a female cast and crew confirm something I've been saying for a long time: when a woman meets someone she perceives as a true Alpha Male she MUST have sex with him - she's helpless - it's in our DNA and it's inevitable, just as it happens here.

Playing the pleasant game of alternative history, we can make a couple of reasonable assumptions.

If Stalin had gotten The Bomb first, would he have used it to achieve global domination? Of course.

And Hitler? He would have leveled London without a second thought.

But the jarring plot point in this narrative is that Joan puts the US in the same category as those guys.

The Yanks took out Hiroshima, and Nagasaki - therefore they have no moral compass whatsoever and poor little Russia must have The Bomb to protect itself.

This is the basic problem with the script: when it comes to science Joan is a very smart cookie.

When it comes to other things - politics, people, sex - she doesn't really seem to know her ass from a hole in the ground.

In her concluding speech she makes the argument that she was right - 50 years of peace proving her decisions - but conveniently fails to mention the epically expensive arms race that resulted.

This is a well-done movie, and certainly worth the time, but the main character - as she's written - is not very convincing and it's reasonable to react to her with a strong sense of impatience.