If I’m going to sit through a long, boring movie I want it to at least have a central character I like, or at least enjoy looking at. Here, by contrast, the focal figure, Dona Clara (played by Sonia Braga), was the least attractive person on view: stubborn, haughty, insensitive, selfish, living lazily on her pension. All her relatives, their friends, her landlord, the lifeguard, even the gigolo were much pleasanter, more reasonable and better looking. Maybe this was a brilliantly subversive movie, designed to challenge the viewer’s expectations that we would root for a widow being forced out of her apartment by a greedy developer. Otherwise, and this is the way I read it, the movie was a misfire.

A by-the-book sports movie, with no story-arc cliche left unexplored, made interesting and eminently watchable because of its (purported) setting: the slums of Kampala, Uganda. I couldn’t help think of the current hurricane-induced tragedy in Haiti as I watched Phiona’s family evicted from their one room, then washed by a flash flood. Seeing humans triumph over these odds was heartwarming, as always; and learning that the story was true trumped my suspicions that so much could be accomplished through the game of chess.

A well-made movie about real people just doing their jobs – how rare and how nice! And oh, I cried the whole time, so there was plenty of drama and heroism. All along the way Clint Eastwood interjected tertiary characters in a way that humanized the story even more and added a light, often comic touch into the mix. Tom Hanks does what he does best – exude decency, while his copilot, Aaron Eckhart, leavened the dough and was always more interesting to watch. The Laura Linney thread, the wife-at-home, was a bit heavyhanded for me, and the press mob was tiresome and unoriginal. The bigger issue is why the NTSB panel was so adversarial – the FAA claims this is a misrepresentation – but that little fiction is a small price to pay for having my heart warmed.