A quest to bring the past to task, right a wrong, WOMAN IN GOLD is the remarkable true story of one woman’s journey to reclaim her heritage and seek justice for what happened to her family.

Sixty years after she fled Vienna during World War II, an elderly Jewish woman, Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren), starts her journey to retrieve family possessions seized by the Nazis, among them Klimt’s famous painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I.

Together with her inexperienced but plucky young lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds), she embarks upon a major battle which takes them to the heart of the Austrian establishment and the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Mirren is of course splendid in the role, however the screenplay by playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell, seems undercooked and Disneyish and director Simon Curtis, such a dab hand at the helm of MY WEEK WITH MARILYN, here seems ham-fisted and drab.

Being a BBC co-production, there’s lots of luvvies loaded into the supporting cast, as well as European actors – Daniel Bruhl as a  sympathetic journalist; Moritz Bleibtreu as Klimt; Antje Traue as Adele Bloch-Bauer; Henry Goodman and Allan Corduner as Maria’s uncle and father, Ferdinand and Gustav Bloch-Bauer (British actors of German heritage who are both fluent in the tongue); Frances Fisher as Randy’s mother; Charles Dance as his law firm boss; Elizabeth McGovern as a California judge whose early verdict changed the course of the case; and Jonathan Pryce as Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

Sydney cinematographer Ross Emery makes WOMAN IN GOLD look absolutely golden, Jim Clay’s production design is top notch as is the costume design by Beatrix Pasztor.

A story like this reminds one of PHILOMENA, a film that lifted the bar for movies about  strong women seeking restitution from a brutal regime and a bull headed bureaucracy, and, sadly, WOMAN IN GOLD doesn’t quite meet that standard.