I was really underwhelmed by the first twenty minutes of this film, and if it hadn’t been for the one hour and twenty minutes that followed it, I’d still feel the same. There’s some very wooden acting going on (especially Channing Tatum’s non-character), a fairly unbelievable escalation, and the sense that this film directed by Steven Soderbergh is a really crappy melodrama.

I say “directed by Steven Soderbergh”, because that should have raised some major red flags, but somehow it didn’t. By that, I mean that the following hour or so not only massively improve on the first twenty, but also validate the film’s opening in a way I couldn’t have possibly predicted. I keep having these “oh, so that’s what was going on” moments, and it’s been about half an hour.

It’s very hard to talk about this film’s plot without utterly ruining it, so focusing on the more cosmetic details: Rooney Mara is utterly beguiling in this film, and I wish I’d seen more of her - though I’m not sure how that would have worked. Catherine Zeta-Jones could have dialed her performance back a little, and Jude Law was what you expect from his sort of role - a fairly inoffensive cipher for the audience, doing exactly the sorts of things you hope he’d do.

In retrospect, the marketing for this was quite clever: I came away thinking that Law was going to be the villain of the piece, when instead he turned out to be a fairly likeable if slightly obsessed protagonist. He never plays to the crowd, but his muted performance deserves praise at least for the way it draws you in.

God, I loved this. And I wasn’t really expecting to. It’s fiercely clever, perfectly paced, and should have received wider acclaim when it came out. Definitely catch it if you haven’t already.