Three old men meet in an East London pub and drink a toast to their mate, Jack (Caine), whose recent death they are mourning. The three are Ray (Hoskins), a racetrack gambler; Vic (Courtenay), an undertaker; and Lenny (Hemmings), an ex- boxer turned fruit-stall operator. They're soon joined by Jack's son, Vince (Winstone), a used-car dealer. The four set off by car for the coastal town of Margate to fulfil Jack's last request, to scatter his ashes off the pier into the sea; Jack and his wife, Amy (Mirren), had spent their honeymoon in Margate.

During the journey, flashbacks explore the lives of these apparently ordinary people. Fred Schepisi's adaptation of Graham Swift's Booker Prize-winning novel is one of his finest achievements ((mdash)) a beautifully realised contemplation on a life, memories of things past and how they linger on into the present. The loves and disappointments of these East Londoners are sensitively told, with superbly cast young actors playing the younger versions of these ageing friends. The casting is very skilful: J.J. Feild is eerily convincing as the young Michael Caine, and David Hemmings's son, Nolan, plays Lenny as a young man. The performances are flawless, Caine is in one of his finest roles, Mirren is quite beautiful, and Winstone continues to impress; they're all superb.

I can't imagine that anyone won't be profoundly moved by this film, which has one of the most beautiful conclusions I've seen in quite a while ((mdash)) it may be about ordinary lives and ordinary people, but it's an extraordinary film.

The first time that I was aware of an editor being one of the stars of a movie was with Frances Ford Coppola's The Conversation. The editor was Walter Murch, whose work on the soundtrack of the film was hailed as a breakthrough. Murch has had a chance to restore and enhance the soundtrack, and this new version is now getting a limited release in cinemas. The film tells the story of a surveillance expert, Harry Caul (Hackman), whose hi-tech eavesdropping on a young couple in Union Square in San Francisco starts to worry him. He was possibly responsible for three deaths through a job he did years ago in New York, and he's worried the same thing is about to happen again.

Utterly timely in its examination of the '70s fetish for electronic eavesdropping that resulted in Watergate, this taut, austere film is beautifully made. All the ingredients ((mdash)) David Shire's bluesy soundtrack, Bill Butler's cinematography (though the opening scene was shot by Haskell Wexler), Coppola's screenplay and direction, and of course Murch's contribution ((mdash)) combine to make a thriller that is actually tremendously relevant today: the alienated, obsessively private Caul uses technology to keep people at a distance. Impeccable performances. In the trivia stakes, you can see a young and very handsome Harrison Ford in a key role. Hackman's performance is his career best. Wonderful camerawork; amazing sound; superb music; and, above all, an intelligent, meaningful thriller, quite horrific yet utterly rooted in reality. Mr. Shyamalan, take note.