Daisy Edgar-Jones proves she is Hollywood’s new star in Where The Crawdads Sing

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING

(15) 125mins 

★★★☆☆

AS debut novels go, Delia Owens’ Where The Crawdads Sing is a knockout, shifting 12million copies – and counting.

This marshland melodrama has all the right ingredients – a murder, a stunning suspect, sumptuous scenery and coming-of-age cuteness.

Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones plays the alluring Kya, the smart but dirt-poor “Marsh Girl” accused of pushing her cruel, well-off ex, Chase (fellow Brit, Harris Dickinson), to his death.

Kya is on trial because their toxic love-across-the-divide affair ended horrifically, so she has a motive — or, because in 1960s small town USA, a scruffy outsider is an easy scapegoat.

She lives alone in a shack in the North Carolina marsh after her drunk WW2 vet father battered her family until they all left.

Shunned by the sniffy townsfolk, Kya trusts few beyond the kind black couple who buy her harvested mussels and (sometimes) her handsome on/off lover, Tate (Taylor John Smith), who teaches her to read.

She spends her days skilfully drawing the local flora and fauna which she eventually compiles into guide books for a local publisher.

In a little over two hours the narrative jumps back and forth from flashbacks to Kya’s brutal and lonely childhood to her chaotic romances and her sitting forlornly in court.

It is all beautifully shot by Brit cinematographer, Polly Morgan, and we get a lot of the talented Edgar-Jones mesmerising Kya but we don’t get enough about Kya.

Where the book deftly draws us into her life and connection to the marsh, director Olivia Newman’s film just skims the surface.

Her haphazard use of the source material is as frustrating as it is baffling. She definitely remembers the gorgeous North Carolina backdrop (the film was actually made in Louisiana) and Kya’s doomed dalliances.

But other plot points are a victim of amnesia.

In Owens’ novel, courtroom scenes are tense and illuminating but here they are flat, riddled with lazy tropes and missing detail. Elsewhere, one major twist is squandered. Another is absent altogether.

And despite her greasy hair and obvious make-under, this Kya is just too immaculate and well-spoken.

A missed opportunity, Crawdads is still a worthwhile watch and proof that Daisy Edgar-Jones is Hollywood’s new star.

• COLIN ROBERTSON

PRIZEFIGHTER: THE LIFE OF JEM BELCHER

on Amazon Prime (18) 95mins 

★★☆☆☆

MADE with passion but seriously lacking in production values, this boxing biopic tells the true story of Jem Belcher.

The Bristol-born butcher was a talented bare-knuckle fighter from the 19th century who became the UK’s youngest-ever champion.

Matt Hookings, who also wrote the script and whose dad was a heavyweight champion in real life, plays suave, brooding Belcher, a naturally talented and charming scrapper, encouraged into the ring by his trainer Bill Warr (Ray Winstone) and his grand- father, Jack Slack (Russell Crowe).

Along the way Belcher’s fists find him success, notoriety and fortune, clawing him up from poverty to mixing in society circles.

But soon, with young pretenders snapping at his heels the champion’s life begins to unravel.

Crowe delivers lines in a dubious West Country accent and with pantomime expressions but still adds gravitas, while the extensive graphic bare-knuckle bouts are not for the squeamish.

Director Daniel Graham has tried to remain faithful to Belcher’s life story but this depiction ends up as featherweight, not knockout.

NOTRE DAME ON FIRE

(12A) 110mins 

★★★★★

SOME plot twists are so implausible that you really couldn’t make them up.

And director Jean-Jaques Annaud has plenty to choose from in his dramatisation of the events that saw Notre Dame cathedral go up in flames in April 2019.

The guard on his very first day in the job, the smoke alarms that had sounded falsely so many times, everyone dismissed them when the roof ignited.

The irreplaceable mediaeval artefacts, including The Crown of Thorns, a nail from the crucifixion and a vial of Christ’s blood, all kept locked in a safe, but the custodian could not remember the code.

Using real-life footage cut with impressive reconstructions the special effects and production are excellent while drone shots of Paris offer a heartfelt love letter to the city.

Less successful are the melodramatic score and over-egged religious symbolism, a child running back into the inferno to light a candle, holy water inferences and gargoyles spouting furnaces.

The proficient cast has little to do as the building is our lead character, and the raging battle to extinguish the flames provides action enough.

• LAURA STOTT