Centered around Dench's performance and the saintly, but not cheesy or overly
sentimental, character of Philomena, the
film could have easily fallen into the worst kind of TV - movie - of - the - week melodrama.
This illustrates the main tension of watching a
film like World Trade
Center... purely as a
film, it is at times manipulative and
sentimental, and there are filmic clichés scattered throughout.