George Clooney’s disarmingly old-school rowing movie gets it right.

It’s unexceptionally filmed and occasionally clunky, but this is a gently heart-warming underdog story, and Turner shows real star-power in the lead role.

The Boys in the Boat is an old-fashioned and solid historical biography that ticks a lot of the right boxes. It’s not going to set tongues wagging but what it does do is tell an inspiring story with polish and a deftness befitting the genre.

This is a film that Hollywood used to make more of, particularly in the last two decades of the twentieth century. It’s a throwback to a different time not only in the story, but to the filmmaking.