Shine director Scott Hicks returns to Australia after his decade-long Hollywood sojourn for this funny, touching drama based on the best-selling memoir by The Independent’s parliamentary sketch writer Simon Carr about his efforts to raise two sons after the death of his second wife from cancer. In the film, Carr becomes sportswriter Joe Warr and the book’s New Zealand setting becomes Australia, but the account of his unorthodox, sometimes chaotic, “least resistance” parenting is the same. Holding the film together as the flawed yet likeable father, Clive Owen shows sides we’ve not seen on screen before, while Nicholas McNulty and George MacKay give appealingly unaffected performances as his sons.
On general release from 22nd January.
