This was the first cinema adaptation of an Ian McEwan novel to really fill the screen. Opening with the breathtaking visual gambit of a hot-air balloon accident on an idyllic summer's day, it then shows how this tragic event alters the lives of three people involved. Science lecturer Joe (Daniel Craig) feels in some way responsible, seeing his relationship with sculptor girlfriend Claire (Samantha Morton) buckle under his post-traumatic stress, while Rhys Ifans's unhinged religious stranger feels a connection with Joe and starts to stalk him. The escalating action and reaction is handled with style and intensity by director Roger Michell (who directed Craig in The Mother), and the cast gives believable, subtly shifting performances, not least Craig. Screenwriter Joe Penhall (Some Voices) has given some plot aspects a facelift, removing a criminal underworld subplot and some of the ambiguity. Though it's often cold and distant, it's a good effort with difficult source material.

Two strangers become dangerously close after witnessing a deadly accident. On a beautiful cloudless day a young couple celebrate their reunion with a picnic. Joe has planned a postcard-perfect afternoon in the English countryside with his partner, Claire. But as Joe and Claire prepare to open a bottle of champagne, their idyll comes to an abrupt end. A hot air balloon drifts into the field, obviously in trouble. The pilot catches his leg in the anchor rope, while the only passenger, a boy, is too scared to jump down. Joe and three other men rush to secure the basket. But fate has other ideas...