Robert De Niro in a romantic drama is almost as rare as a white Christmas, and his pairing here with Meryl Streep, as commuters who fall in love on their daily trip to Manhattan, is an unexpected delight.

True, there are many coincidences for cynical viewers and New York's station platforms have never looked cleaner.

But lovers of pulp fiction, and anyone who harks back to the golden Douglas Sirk days of 1950s Hollywood melodrama, will be weeping uncontrollably by the end.