The contrast between the pleasure of playing the game and the dourness of its plot often ends up confusing things.

The cast is fine, but there’s a dispiriting dourness to the film.

The dourness of Nolan’s “Dark Knight” films has often been overstated, often to the neglect of their hurtling narrative velocity, impish wit and gorgeously enveloping images.

But if the film avoids the typical sentimentalism of dramas about terminal illness, it indulges heavily in dourness.

To his exasperation, the audience loved it all - his dourness, his deadpan answers, his low-key frustration at being trapped in a 21st Century Kafkaesque nightmare.