HEARTS IN ATLANTIS

Year: 2001
USA & UK: Warner Bros
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Anton Yelchin, Hope Davis, Mika Boorem, David Morse, Alan Tudyk, Tom Bower, Celia Weston, Adam Lefevre, Timothy Reifsnyder, Will Rothhaar, Deirdre O'Connell, Eric Eggen, Bourke Floyd, Kathie France, Sara Hamilton, Jim Hild, Wes Johnson, Kristina Lash, Steve Little, David Rivitz
Director: Scott Hicks
Country: USA
USA: 101 mins
UK: 100 mins
USA Rated: PG-13 for violence and thematic elements
UK Certificate: 12 contains implied sexual assault
USA Release Date: 28 September 2001
UK Release Date: 8 March 2002


Synopsis

For middle-aged photographer Bobby Garfield (David Morse), the past comes kicking the door down one day when the death of a childhood friend beckons him back to the town of his upbringing, and the memory of his 11th summer in 1960.

It's a summer of friendship shared with his closest pals, Carol (Mika Boorem) and Sully (Will Rothhaar), and marked by the arrival of a new lodger, Ted Brautigan (Anthony Hopkins) in the upstairs apartment of the boarding house where Bobby lives with his self-obsessed mother, Liz (Hope Davis).

Bobby's memory of his long-dead father is clouded by his mother's bitterness, but Ted fills the gap, offering him adult friendship and attention, and helping to open the boy's eyes to a bigger world.

But Ted brings with him too a haunted past, and strange powers which both puzzle and alarm Bobby. When he offers Bobby a job, it's more than simply reading the paper to save the old man's failing eyes - Ted enlists the boy to help him avoid a powerful danger that's pursuing him.

As the last summer of Bobby's childhood draws to a close, Ted gives him a new understanding of his father, and the possibilities of life and love, before events overtake them all. Ted's pursuers close in, forcing Bobby to find depths of courage and forgiveness he never imagined.

And for the adult Bobby, revisiting his childhood home and the memories of a summer long gone, a chance encounter completes the circle of his journey back in time.