I'm glad it wasn't just me who had problems with the soundtrack: I thought the sound quality was actually quite bad in places. And yes -- I think even for what it was, it really missed a trick in not emphasising that some of the small craft made the crossing twice and three times, and what astonishing courage it took to just turn around and face those odds afresh, but this time knowing how bad it was. I guess there was a sort of gesture at it with the Cillian Murphy character, but not really.

The more I reflect on it, the more it irritates me, because I think it was actually a highly sentimentalised production, but it was exactly the sort of costive sentimentality that doesn't conflict with completely conventional ideas of masculinity.