The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry — Jim Broadbent goes on a very English odyssey

Nothing stirs at the start of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Instead, sleepy south Devon is watched through net curtains by the retired hero of the title, played by Jim Broadbent. Life soon cranks into motion, though. The film is a road movie without a car, inspired by word of an old colleague dying in a hospice. As if stirring from an anaesthetic, Harold resolves to send a card. Then, at the postbox, he decides to deliver it by hand, setting off in deck shoes to walk the 450 miles to Berwick-upon-Tweed. His wife, Maureen (Penelope Wilton, terse) thought he was just popping out for milk.

The essential weirdness of the premise hangs over a journey of variable pacing. (Exeter is only reached in what feels like real time.) If the plain-spoken Harold can suggest a transatlantic riff on Forrest Gump, the film is a very English odyssey. Scheduled to end three miles shy of the Scottish border, it can be hard not to take the story as a state-of-the-nation address, although Harold is too opaque a figure for politics. He does, however, embrace foraging, posting his bank cards back to a now panicked Maureen.

A satirist might have fun with a suburban pensioner turned wandering sage, and Broadbent is a peerless comic. (When a stranger turns erotically frank in a café, his stunned face has never looked more like it was drawn by Raymond Briggs.) But comedy is not really the aim here. Instead, the tone is tied up with odd hints of the messianic, and uncertainly handled flashbacks to tragedy. Broadbent rescues the film from becoming a slog, although a word too for Wilton — like her character, left to make the most of being stuck at home.

★★★☆☆

In UK cinemas from April 28