There is a compelling true story behind Woman in Gold, a new drama starring Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds. However, this underdog tale is only intermittently engaging and not quite as powerful as it thinks it is, despite the efforts of a good ensemble.

Mirren is always a terrific screen presence and she is perfectly cast as Maria Altmann, an aging Jewish woman hoping to reclaim several Gustav Klimt paintings that the Nazis stole from her family. 

One of the artworks is a portrait of her aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, drenched in gold. Valued at more than $100 million, the painting is considered to be “the Mona Lisa of Austria” and hangs in the country’s national gallery.

Now a native of Los Angeles, Maria wants to repossess the painting that belonged to her family, of a woman who meant so much to her. She tells young, inexperienced lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Reynolds) that she wants the artwork back for honour and justice, not money. 

Soon after, the fussy old lady and her milquetoast attorney fly to Vienna to challenge the Austrian government over the painting. 

Inspired by the British documentary Stealing Klimt, Woman in Gold, which opens nationwide on April 3, swerves between riveting historical drama and a rather kitschy depiction of true events.

The best moments in director Simon Curtis’s film are its flashback sequences, filled with an overwhelming white hue. These scenes, poignant and tense, show how Maria encountered anti-Semitism in Vienna as a young woman. 

In the film’s most riveting sequence, we watch Maria attempt to escape the city with her husband, even with Nazis teeming around the airport and major centres.

Canadian actor Tatiana Maslany (from Orphan Black) plays young Maria with a defiance and emotional vigour that much of the rest of the film lacks.

When Woman in Gold returns to Maria and Randy’s more contemporary legal battles – not to forget the odd-couple idiosyncrasies played for light comedy – the film is not as affecting. 

Maria is rather contradictory. At the film’s start, she explains she would rather die than return to Austria. However, during a passionate speech given in Vienna about her family and the war, she never wilts into pained tears or anxiety. 

Randy’s character arc is more interesting. As Maria’s case immerses him in Jewish history, he begins to get in touch with a religious heritage he hasn’t thought too much about. However, a scene at a Vienna Holocaust memorial where Randy confronts this horror is rushed and thus feels emotionally cheap. 

Woman in Gold comes from Alexi Kaye Campbell’s first produced screenplay. Unfortunately, the story is jammed with stock characters. Daniel Brühl (from Rush) is wasted as an Austrian investigative journalist, a character that mainly exists to spout exposition. Katie Holmes is stuck in an embarrassingly tiny role as Randy’s supportive, pregnant wife. 

Furthermore, Randy’s stern boss, played by The Imitation Game’s Charles Dance, is also a cliché. “Since when have we been paying you to have feelings?” he barks at Randy, after the lawyer notes his interest in spending more time with Maria’s case. 

To fit a complex legal case into a 109-minute film, Campbell’s screenplay reduces a lot of this intriguing history into its barest, most superficial elements. The courtroom scenes, blandly shot and filled with clunky legal jargon, also need to be more engaging.

Meanwhile, the Austrian lawyers and officials are a stereotypically sneering bunch. Many of these characters are reduced to pompous caricatures that don’t get much of a chance to defend their own interests in a national treasure. 

The move by Austria’s government to return stolen Nazi artwork to its citizens is dismissed as a PR stunt, even if its intentions were noble. As beautiful as Vienna looks in Curtis’ film, one doubts the Austrian population will be too happy with how they are haughtily represented.

Woman in Gold is less two-dimensional with Maria and Randy. Despite Mirren and Reynolds’ best efforts, though, Curtis’ drama too often reduces a fascinating story into easily digestible plot points. It is, ultimately, a film about reclaiming an artwork that doesn’t stake much of a claim on being artful or absorbing.