A very patchy and stilted new version of the famous Terence Rattigan play about a cadet expelled from naval college in 1911 for the alleged theft of a five shilling postal order. Adapter-director David Mamet pays far too much respect to Rattigan's text, with the result that the thing moves stiffly, looks more like a stage play than ever and lacks almost all the dynamism that so distinguished the 1948 original. Of the present cast, which includes the director's wife and brother-in-law, only Jeremy Northam, as the charismatic counsel who defends the eponymous accused, and Nigel Hawthorne, as the ailing Winslow father, come close to matching their earlier counterparts.

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