One Life review: Anthony Hopkins’ take on the That’s Life! hero Sir Nicholas Winton is better than the film that surrounds him

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Get our The Life Cinematic email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Anthony Hopkins has achieved this with grace in One Life, a somewhat thin, reductively sentimental retelling of the life of British humanitarian Sir Nicholas Winton, which its star has empowered with raw, much-needed complexity. On the one hand, they’ve been compelled to tell the story of a man who overcame needless, restrictive bureaucracy, and an apathetic home nation, to rescue 669 mainly Jewish refugee children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. It eventually ends up in the hands of Elisabeth Maxwell, wife of Czechoslovak-born newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell, who puts into motion Winton’s famous 1988 appearance on Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life! It’s a self-evidently poignant scene, yet the film’s narrow, near-obsessive focus on rewarding Winton’s humility both lessens the profundity of his heroism and plays too conveniently into populist British cinema’s obsession with stoicism.