This is not the greatest film you ever saw by Japanese master director Akira Kurosawa - far from it. It allows an obsession with the Nagasaki A-bomb to get fatally in the way of a delicate observation of four children staying with their grandmother for the summer holidays. There are some nicely composed shots, and winning performances from the children and granny. But it's very slow (more of a drawback here than in some Japanese films) and some of its attitudes may be less acceptable to western eyes, with its characters made to talk in such simplistic phrases as 'People do anything just to win a war'. Hollywood's Richard Gere is in for a cameo and must be congratulated on his seemingly competent Japanese: for such a big star, though, his journey to the east seemed hardly necessary.

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