Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Both leads did an incredible job as the anguished parents of a missing child. Their story was mixed with the very interesting and bizarre story of a brilliant friend who, because of mental illness, reverted back to his own childhood. This was mixed throughout the movie with BC's struggle to forgive himself and grieve over his loss. Don't miss a minute of this film!

This movie is hard to get into since it has many things going on. When the end came I thought that there was going to be a part two. There was not a part two-that was the movie in it's entirety. I did not like this movie. This is 90 minutes of my life that I will never get back.

Spoilers: Your husband dresses like a young boy, builds forts in the woods and you blithely look out your window and ring a bell when supper is ready??? Your child disappears and you don't contact your wife immediately but wait until you're driven home by the police?? You apparently don't work but can afford an huge upscale flat or are we supposed to believe a children's book writer in this day and age can live off royalties??? Or an apparently friendless woman teaching a few hours a week and giving piano lessons can afford a killer stand alone cottage on a large Kent property?. Oh dear. I am someone who cries over diaper commercials but nothing in this contrived out of touch melodrama touched me in any way. Each character was an upper class white Brit - devoid of passion. Everyone said their lines appropriately but what was happening underneath?? Nothing. I kept on hoping it would get better. It didn't. When it ended in a barren hospital room with no monitoring equipment and a woman valiantly giving birth without aid of drugs, I wondered if this script had been written in the '50

Generally speaking, children don't just disappear off the face of the earth. When a child is reported missing or murdered, parents and people known to the child are routinely investigated as persons of interest because stranger abductions are very rare. Nevertheless stories about missing children have a universal scare element that draws readers and viewers and has been the basis of some memorable films, from the 1975 arthouse classic Picnic at Hanging Rock to the true crime TV film Adam and the feature Without a Trace (both 1983), all of them made well before Ian McEwan published his novel A Child in Time. So he wasn't exploring new thematic territory as much as exploiting a very familiar theme that, if this adaptation is any indication, he didn't really have much interest in and threw away as soon as he'd gotten the reader's attention with it. Like previous reviewers I'm amazed at how quickly the parents give up their seach for their little girl. The nasty rageaholic mother even sneers at the father's attempt to put up posters asking for help--if this were another type of story she would probably turn out to be the murderer. But that's not the point, right? The point is for the filmmakers to make an elegant tone poem in muted colors while the actors do their Bafta best and Ian McEwan scores points using the subject of child abduction as coldly and irresponsibly as he used child rape in Atonement.