There is a quietly monumental piece of screen acting in the first 15 minutes of The Boys are Back. Here Clive Owen plays Joe Warr, an ex-pat sportswriter living in Australia, who is relating some tragic news over the phone to his eldest and British-based son Harry (George MacKay).

Warr’s young wife Katy (Laura Fraser) has died from cancer. “Katy passed away in the early hours of this morning,” he announces, calmly, before his face is suddenly and silently contorted with a rictus of profound emotional agony. But then, quick as it came, and with his son still hanging on the line, the emotion is gone, and Owen’s Warr is back in control. This short scene is both a richly satisfying method of telegraphing the limits of Warr’s character and a stinging reminder of Owen’s often overlooked dramatic abilities.

Like his American counterpart, George Clooney, Owen is often considered a charismatic dreamboat rather than a serious screen-acting pitbull. Whereas for most of The Boys are Back it is his central turn alone — sometimes harried, sometimes raging, sometimes mischievous — that keeps the movie firmly on track. Directed by Scott Hicks (Shine), and adapted from the journalist Simon Carr’s memoir by the TV writer Alan Cubitt, the central narrative follows Warr’s recovery from bereavement, and how this is executed through the unconventional relationship he builds with his youngest son, Artie (Nicholas McAnulty).

Thus Warr’s belief in loose parental discipline and free expression soon transforms his gorgeous seaside home (the film was shot in coastal South Australia) into a haven for pillow fights, indoor football, broken plates, unwashed dishes and junk food litter. And although Warr’s position as a sportswriter is threatened (he writes bogus columns), and a local yummy mummy called Laura (Emma Booth) warns him to clean up his act, it isn’t until Harry arrives for an extended stay that Warr begins to question his methods.

Not all this is good news, of course. The plot is occasionally reminiscent and derivative of other, greater, Dad-bonding movies, such as Kramer Vs Kramer or the recent Grace is Gone, and the six-year-old McAnulty, no matter how game, simply can’t handle most of Artie’s emotionally subtle lines. “Daddy, did Mummy die last night?” he asks, aiming for childlike innocence but achieving only the eerie, stone-eyed delivery of an alien changeling. Owen, nonetheless, soldiers on, bringing Artie into reality whenever he can, and adding an exemplary performance to his own eclectic body of work.

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