A great actor shouldn’t only be judged on what they can do with a masterful script, but also on how they can take a lesser work and still let it soar. Anthony Hopkins has achieved this with grace in One Life, a somewhat thin, reductively sentimental retelling of the life of British humanitarian Sir Nicholas Winton, which its star has empowered with raw, much-needed complexity.
Screenwriters Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake, meanwhile, find themselves torn in two by conflicting impulses. On the one hand, they’ve been compelled to tell the story of a man who overcame needless, restrictive bureaucracy, and an apathetic home nation, to rescue 669 mainly Jewish refugee children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. Alongside Doreen Warriner and Trevor Chadwick, Winton facilitated their escape on a series of eight Kindertransports, which eventually brought them to the UK and the homes of local sponsor families.
