Evelyn may be based on a true and historically significant story, but the filmmakers have made every effort to disguise it as an unimaginative screenwriter's invention. As a child custody drama, it's unfair to even compare it to a film like Ken Loach's Ladybird, Ladybird, which is not only genuinely powerful and emotionally honest, but reflects the problems of the society and systems it depicts. Evelyn doesn't even compare favorably to a well-executed Hollywood melodrama like Kramer vs. Kramer. Director Bruce Beresford and screenwriter Paul Pender lay on the sentiment in thick, brogue-addled gobs as they desecrate a true but presumably dramatically inadequate story, adding an evil, perjuring nun (while essentially giving the Catholic Church, which was probably largely responsible for the Irish child welfare laws of the time, a free pass) and an ill-tempered, leering stock villain of a judge. They also chose to turn Desmond Doyle (Pierce Brosnan) into a stereotypical Irish drunk, remove two of his children from the tale, and turn Evelyn's two remaining younger brothers into voiceless extras. Brosnan has a few genuine moments of anger (including one startling scene wherein he throttles the abusive nun) that cut through the cotton candy of the script, while Sophie Vavasseur acquits herself well enough as the impossibly self-possessed title character. Stephen Rea, generally a fine actor, barely registers, and Alan Bates hams it up egregiously, perhaps in a desperate effort to inject a little life into this predictable tale, in which barely a single moment rings true.
