In 1988, Grete Winton (Lena Olin) leaves her husband, the elderly and retired stockbroker Nicholas Winton (Sir Anthony Hopkins), alone for the weekend. Nicholas starts tidying up a bit, and stumbles across an old notebook that holds hundreds of photographs of the Jewish children he helped escape Czechoslovakia before the onset of World War II. Haunted by those he couldn’t help, Nicholas starts to reminisce and wonders what became of the survivors.

Oskar Schindler is celebrated for saving the lives of 1,200 Jewish people during the Holocaust by those he saved, their families and the larger general population having learned his story via the 1982 novel Schindler’s Ark and its 1993 film adaptation, Schindler’s List, directed by one Steven Spielberg.

It is quite surprising, then, not to have heard much of Nicholas Winton. Perhaps it is the self-effacing British nature that steered Nicholas into keeping his achievements close to his chest, let alone locked in a drawer to collect dust. Over the weekend on his lonesome, Nicholas debates the best way to preserve the notebook, while remembering his frantic work during the late 1930s, putting his bureaucratic skills to the test by helping his colleagues tear through red tape against rising stakes and a ticking clock.

It is a shame, then, that the movie needlessly and artificially escalates drama and emotion when the story is strong enough with both.

Verdict: An amazing story told in a very conventional way, just in time for Oscar season. 3 stars.

Luke McWilliams, themovieclub.net