Green Book

Picking an Oscar Best Picture winner from this year's nominees can't have been an easy task (aside from ensuring Bohemian Rhapsody got nowhere near the trophy of course.)

Green Book took many by surprise as the winner but, for those who've seen it, there isn't another film more deserving. As I mentioned in my previous review, the drama genre is certainly going through a boom but a lot of the recent successes are very serious, mature, slow-burning beasts. Green Book arrives as a breath of fresh air to the scene.

Ostensibly a film about Don Shirley, an African-American concert pianist, touring the American Deep South in the early 1960's, Green Book is more a film about friendship, inclusivity, race relations and the power of the human heart and soul.

It boasts two of the year's outstanding performances; Mahershala Ali as the aforementioned Shirley is the antithesis of his performance in last year's Best Picture winner Moonlight: he's stately, composed, unflustered (and apparently plays all his own piano parts!) and initially at loggerheads with Viggo Mortensen's Tony, a notorious 'fixer' hired as Shirley's driver for the tour.

Mortensen is a million miles away from Middle Earth here with a thick accent, beer belly and Brad Pitt-alike habit of scoffing food in every scene. He is a true force of nature and a contender for the performance of his career.

It's a breezy, light-hearted and often laugh-out-loud film but also boasting a sharp tongue, social conscience and moral heart.

The script is a corker with some particularly prevalent messages and arguments about the American Dream and its fraught history with race.

It's a real human film as this 'odd-couple' grow and their friendship blossoms, the audience can almost see their souls learn to understand each other.

It stands out in a genre filled with standouts in recent times and is a very worthy Best Picture winner. A contender come the end of year tally-up.

5 stars *****