THREE STARS

 

Big has always been beautiful to Lana and Andy Wachowski, writer-directors of the visually stunning Matrix trilogy. The first instalment of their epic science-fiction saga pushed the boundaries of digital trickery and introduced the slow-motion “bullet time” effect, which has been copied countless times.

Bold ambition shimmers in every frame of Cloud Atlas, the siblings’ chronologically fractured adaptation of David Mitchell’s novel, co-directed by Tom Tykwer of Run Lola Run fame.

The multi-layered narrative ricochets between several timeframes in which a starry cast including Halle Berry, James D’Arcy, Hugh Grant, Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Jim Sturgess, Hugo Weaving and Ben Whishaw adopt myriad guises with the aid of prosthetics and, in Hanks’s case, one hilariously strangled accent.

Like the book, the film requires a certain amount of patience as the script sets various plot wheels in motion and the stories take time to gradually knit together.

Cloud Atlas shoots for the moon and narrowly misses.

Production design is jaw-dropping and the cast give their all.

But some segments including Broadbent’s incarceration in the nursing home are superfluous, bloating a languid three-hour running time that will be an endurance test too far for some buttocks.