It's an unfortunate sign that Grandage, one of the foremost theater directors working today, has not exactly shaken off his stage roots with this first effort behind the camera. While there are grace notes in Firth's diffident, dignified performance, supplying a welcome contrast to Law's histrionics, the two men's complex internal dynamic — Perkins yearning for the son he never had, Wolfe desperate for fatherly approval — feels more constructed, more written, than fully inhabited.