Big budget Hollywood adaptation of the novel set on the Italian-occupied Greek island of Cephalonia during the 1940s. Captain Corelli (Nicolas Cage), an opera-loving mandolin player, finds the population resentful when he first arrives on the island. But soon his involvement with local beauty Pelagia (Penelope Cruz) helps him form a bond with the local community and he starts to question his own involvement in the war. The tentative love affair between Corelli and Pelagia is then tested by the brutal arrival of the Germans in 1943.