THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY

12A ★★★ In cinemas now

In The Last Bus in 2021, Timothy Spall used his Freedom Pass to travel from John O’Groats to Land’s End to scatter his wife’s ashes.

Now, Jim Broadbent has embarked on an even loweroctane road trip. As his Devon pensioner Harold Fry is on foot (and those feet are encased in a pair of tatty loafers), his 500-mile “pilgrimage” is even more challenging.

Harold’s journey is inspired by the arrival of a letter from Berwick-on-Tweed. Queenie, a former colleague of Harold’s, is dying alone in a hospice and has written to say goodbye.

Harold gingerly picks up a Biro. “Just say something you mean!” snaps his wife Maureen (Penelope Wilton).

But Harold can’t find the right words. He walks out of the house to post his trite reply. And he keeps walking. Harold will visit his old friend before she dies, expressing his feelings through a bizarre feat of endurance.

As he hobbles his way across the grass verges of England’s A-roads, flashbacks reveal the role Queenie played in a life-changing tragedy.

His quest inspires strangers and TV reporters, including a Slovakian cleaner who washes his bloodied feet and a troubled young Christian who wants to be his apostle.

But Harold is no messiah. This secular pilgrimage is about exploring the mystery of selfless acts of human kindness.

After a while, the pace flags and the side characters feel a little thinly sketched. But the lead performances are terrific. Broadbent uses those twinkly eyes to devastating effect and Wilton is even better as the angry abandoned wife.

The pauses in their strained phone conversations speak of decades of resentment and a deep well of love.

NO MEAN FEET Broadbent as Harold