While UIP's romantic comedy Along Came Polly held onto the top spot in its second week with a respectable 30% slip from its launch it was Icon's drama 21 Grams that proved the real triumph in the UK last weekend.

The film presents three story lines constantly interlinking and which jump backwards and forwards in time while dealing with drugs, religion, guilt, tragic loss and mortality and may have been seen by many as a potential tough sell.

However, Icon released the film the week after the Oscars at 127 sites and while Alejandro Gutierrez Inarritu's film did not pick up any awards the nominations for Naomi Watts and Benecio Del Toro as well as star Sean Penn's win (albeit for Mystic River) may have helped the plan work.

Generally strong reviews met the film which scored the best screen average of any film on release.

Also doing solid business amongst the new openers was UK romantic comedy Suzie Gold. Pathe opened the film, which stars Summer Phoenix, on just 24 screens taking a $120,312 (£65,089) box office weekend and a strong $5,000 screen average.