The Aeronauts

A thrilling, action-packed, wide-vista yarn from the sharp quills of Jack Thorne and co-writer and director Tom Harper, this Amazon-backed project is deceptively simple yet surprisingly deft.

Real life or not, there is little truth here.

Suspend all disbelief, hold tight to the wicker basket and go along for the ride.

It is a film with charm and the chemistry between Jones and Redmayne has something rather platonic and even sibling-like, but that isn’t to say there isn’t a spark of sorts.

There’s enough potential with the balloon’s feats to justify an entire feature-length experience set within its basket, but “The Aeronauts” constantly interrupts the journey to shoehorn random tangents on the ground, and busies up the drama with underdeveloped side characters.

The duo [of Redmayne and Jones] hand-in-hand elevates [The Aeronauts] ... from a flimsy action-adventure to something worth watching on the biggest possible screen, even if it operates on a handful of clichés with little character-based substance to speak of.

The Aeronauts achieves impressive elevation as a bracing and sympathetic account of two early and very different aviators who together reached literal new heights in a perilous field of endeavor.