Hot sex, nudity, foul language and gangland warfare are all elements Charles Dickens would have no doubt loves to put into his Victorian pot-boiler if he'd had the chance. Well of course he would.

So director Alfonso Cuaron has made it up to Charlie with this modern version of the yarn, which has or hero (Ethan Hawke) renamed Finn, meeting the reclusive dowager (Anne Bancroft) and the escaped convict (Robert De Niro), as in the novel.

He also meets the willful Estella (Gwyneth Paltrow), who romps around in the nude with an abandon that would have made old Dickens's eyes gleam.

Painter Finn gets packed off to the New York art world, where he bores the pants off everyone including, naturally, Estella, before an (almost) traditional ending dispatches the recluse (not, alas, in flames) and the convict, before bringing the wayward couple back together.

Drippy is the word for the romance here and for the performances of the leads, resulting in a sort of Danielle Steel's Great Expectations.

It's Dickens Jim, but not as we know it!