Grade: B

Verdict: A small, heartfelt movie with a hearty big-name cast.

Details: Starring Pierce Brosnan, Aidan Quinn, Julianna Margulies and Alan Bates. Directed by Bruce Beresford. Rated PG for language and drinking. 1 hour, 34 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: Whatever the luck of the Irish may be, Desmond Doyle (Pierce Brosnan), the protagonist of the moving new film, “Evelyn,” doesn't have it.

It's Christmas time in Dublin, 1953. Doyle's young daughter, Evelyn (Sophie Vavasseur), has just watched Mommy get into a big shiny car with a strange man. The little girl thinks she's going shopping because she's dressed so nicely. But Mom's headed for Australia, leaving her three children behind with her stunned husband, an out-of-work house painter. Because their dad is now a single parent and unemployed, the children are sent by the courts to orphanages run by the Catholic Church — Evelyn to the nuns (some nicer than others) and her brothers to the priests.

Doyle may be too fond of the drink, but he loves his children desperately and will do anything to get them back. Unfortunately the archaic family services system, a calamitous collusion of church and state, isn't set up — or inclined — to help him. So Doyle enlists a rag-tag team of sympathetic lawyers — Michael (Stephen Rea), whose sister, Bernadette (Julianna Margulies), works at the bar where Doyle picks up a few pennies singing Irish songs for the tourists; Nick (Aidan Quinn), their American friend who's sweet on Bernadette; and Tom (Alan Bates), a rip-roaring retired barrister who was once a rugby star and still loves a good fight for a good cause. (“Your case is interesting,” he says. “Hopeless but interesting.”) They take their case all the way to the Irish Supreme Court. If they win, they change the entire basis of family law in Ireland.

The movie is based on a true story and its ending isn't hard to guess. I mean, are they going to make a movie about a decent father who gives up the drink, straightens up his act, goes to court and still loses his daughter to evil nuns? Maybe if it were made by David Lynch.

The film has a sturdy good heart and a dynamite cast who delight in doing a melodramatic tear-jerker to the very best of their abilities. Brosnan, who also produced, got behind the movie the minute he read the script and his effort has paid off. Not only did his star clout help the movie get made, but the movie, in turn, gives him a lovely opportunity to show us what an “act” 007 really is. Brosnan is a classically trained actor with a considerable range. He's irresistible here, and quite touching as an essentially decent underdog, who's not above using a little Irish charm to get what he wants. True, Brosnan looks better in stubble and ratty clothing than most men do in a tux, but there's no feeling whatsoever that this is a vanity production.

The movie has a great '50s feel — the clothes, the cars, the sodden streets. Director Bruce Beresford flirts with TV-movie territory, but overall, he does a solid job. And note how his attention to details. For example, Doyle's briefly-seen wife looks a little like Bernadette, i.e., she's already Doyle's type.

“Evelyn” is a genuine heart-warmer, something that the family could probably see together over the holidays. With its personal feel, its more-than-capable cast and its rousing courtroom finale, it's the sort of picture that makes “old-fashioned” a good thing.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution