Joe Wright ups the artifice for this try-hard take on Tolstoy’s 1877 novel.
With outdoor scenes all staged in a dilapidated theatre (racecourses, ice rinks, the railway station), it’s innovative, if a little tiresome.
Keira Knightley and Wright re-team with less success than Atonement or Pride & Prejudice - her unfaithful Russian aristo spouse hardly helped by the fact Aaron Taylor-Johnson, as Anna’s lover Vronsky, looks like he’s just started shaving.
The result is more noble failure than successful showstopper.
