What is perhaps most remarkable about Bale's and Adams's performances is that they supply depth and nuance to a film whose director appears to have had no appetite for either quality.

Despite this ongoing fishing analogy, it never actually manages to land the big fish.

When a movie's premise is that its subject single-handedly moulded recent history, you want more depth and grandeur than this one provides.

It has very little unique insight to share, and the various styles in which it attempts to convey what it does have comes off as either misplaced or pretentious.