Just before the outbreak of WWII, Nicholas Winton, a young British stockbroker, arranged the transport and adoption of 669 Czech and Slovakian children. He then modestly clammed up for 50 years until a suitcase was found full of records of his heroism.

He was outed on a variety TV program that included in its audience several now-grown people he saved. It’s all quite moving.

But there’s this: Throughout my viewing of this 2023 film, I had the nagging feeling that I’d seen it before. Especially the moving final scenes. After a little digging I learned that what I was remembering was a 2011 quasi documentary titled Nicky’s Family. Indeed, I lifted that first paragraph from my own review of that movie.

This dramatization of the same material by James Hawes is arguably the better of the two, aided as it is by a cast that includes a never-better Anthony Hopkins, Lena Olin, Johnny Flynn and Helena Bonham Carter.

Neither movie is without flaws, but both are well worth watching, and both left me a little misty by the end. Go see this one. It’s the kind of film that makes you a better person. (114 min)