Woman in Gold tarnished film

Woman in Gold, starring Ryan Reynolds and Helen Mirren, was no masterpiece.

Being an art lover I was a sitter for the film Woman in Gold when it came on telly last Sunday night.

It's based on the true story of Maria Altman, an Austrian Jewish woman who escaped the Nazis and manage to relocate to the United States.

The crux of Woman in Gold is stolen art - particularly a glorious painting in gold leaf by Gustav Klimt of Maria's aunt Adele Bloch-Bauer - described by Austrians as their Mona Lisa.

Maria, played in old age by Helen Mirren, is determined the painting should be returned to her so sues the Austrian Government.

The young son of an old Jewish friend, Randy Schoenburg played by Ryan Reynolds, is her lawyer.

But despite being a true story, the film was stilted, the writing cumbersome and it didn't seem to have any light and shade. And though Mirren was the arch Austrian aristocrat, she didn't give the old girl real strength.

She seemed to be a constantly twisted, griping, bitter old woman instead.

And Reynolds as the lawyer, whose grandfather was the great Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, was frankly boring. Maybe that was the brief he was given.

Knowing the story I was keen to see how it played out on screen.
It started well enough with the death of Maria's sister and the discovery among her belongings of her unsuccessful efforts to recover the five Klimt paintings displayed at their home in Vienna.

Probably the most powerful scenes in this film were the flashbacks of the Nazis triumphal drive into Vienna and the footage of Jews having to scrub insults off the pavements outside their homes.

Somehow this film ambled through. It had no sting, just a smattering of ambiance but no hefty strong script for the actors to draw you in.

Why Reynolds was encouraged to be such a monosyllabic bore is beyond me.

And Mirren? Well she just didn't fire, even in the court scenes.

Not a memorable film for me.