Loosely based on a true event, California Dreamin’ is set in 1999 in Romania. Armand Assante, pictured, is bull-headed US Marine Captain Jones in charge of a Nato mission to deliver vital equipment to Kosovo.

When his train stops in a sleepy backwater, station master and black marketeer Doiaru (Razvan Vasilescu) refuses to let them continue without proper paperwork.

Doiaru senses some easy pickings in these foolish Americans but also has an old score to settle with the US’s refusal to save Romania from the hands of the Nazis or the Soviets at the end of the Second World War.

The early stages of the film have the air of an Ealing comedy but the tone darkens towards bitter irony as the story becomes a tragic reflection on bureaucratic intransigence and the folly of America’s blundering, well-intentioned attempts to shape world affairs.

OUR VERDICT ***
(Cert 15; 155 mins)