Half Of A Yellow Sun

A film of two halves, too. Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in Biyi Bandele’s ambitious but unbalanced adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s multi-angle novel about the Nigerian Civil War, where personal ructions between two sisters (Thandie Newton, Anika Noni Rose) and their men (Ejiofor, Joseph Mawle) suffer the further ructions of political strife.

Bandele’s keen handling of cast and domestic conflict makes for a nuanced historical epic, but he’s less sure on the big stuff: tedious newsreel footage punctuated by jolting explosions doesn’t, alas, quite add up to a full picture.