I Love a Man in Uniform

This is a very different movie that isn't easy to find on either VHS or DVD. I know it as "Man In Uniform" and, unfortunately, got rid of my tape after seeing this a few times. Now I regret it because I'd like to see it again.

"Disturbing" is a word most often used to describe this story. A mentally- disturbed small-time actor gets a role in a show in which he plays a cop. He begins to think that is really is a policeman and begins to impersonate one out in the streets.

This is a Grade-B type production with actors that may not be familiar outside of Canada, but it gets by. Tom McCamus plays the main role as "Henry Adler." Brigitt Bako is interesting in here, too.

If you can find this movie and enjoy stories about wacked-out people, grab it.

I was very surprised by just how effective this movie really was. Some of the minor storylines don't work that well, but the main plot, in which an actor playing a cop starts pretending to be a cop, is great. These scenes were generally compelling, since I was never sure when (or if) he was ever going to get caught. McCamus plays the lead very well, and the rest of the cast is good, too. Quite simply, this is a very good film that deserves to be seen.

Henry Adler (Tom McCamus) sees a cop get shot on the streets of Toronto and uses it in his acting audition. His boss wants him to quit his acting hobby and concentrate on his bank job. He lives alone. He gets a job playing hard cop Flannigan on the harsh TV show Crime Wave. Charlette Warner (Brigitte Bako) plays the hooker with a heart of gold. Henry starts walking the streets wearing the realistic costume. The bank gets robbed by a Marilyn Monroe type and Detective Itch investigates Henry. His father is hospitalized by a stroke. He starts dating Charlette who then pushes him away. After his TV job ends, he continues to walk the streets as a cop and gets involved with corrupt cop Frank.

This is a smaller budget Canadian movie. The production looks like it. It starts slowly. Tom McCamus is a skinny lanky type. He's more of a character actor. He does build up to a good creepiness. He's a wimp play acting who is pushed too far in the climatic scene. There are secondary stories that get big introductions and then abandoned. This is shooting for Taxi Driver but doesn't achieves anything quite so exceptional. It's still an admirable attempt.

Slick and stylish, Canadian director Wellington's first feature is a tight, mostly unpredictable tale of urban degeneration and psychological breakdown, with a realistic, ominous atmosphere of foreboding throughout. Creating an incredibly human anti-hero, lead actor Tom MacCamus gives an appropriately nervy portrayal of Henry Adler, a fledgling method actor (and bank employee) who lands his first big role as a policeman on a tabloid-TV cop show, only to gradually go off the deep end. He starts mistaking his role with reality when a series of shattering events of urban violence and personal frustrations lead him to the edge of sanity. In the opening scenes, he witnesses a real cop get shot through the stomach on a downtown Toronto street corner in broad daylight. A brutal bank robbery occurs in the branch where he is vault manager. Initially attracted to him, his co-star on the show, Charlie (Brigitte Bako) shuns him when she senses his confused obsessiveness and moral perplexity. His cold and callous father (David Hemblen) dies of a stroke. All of these happenings conspire to make him don his cop outfit, and walk the streets, soaking up the urgent power the uniform provides him. He is so convincing, everyone takes him for a bona fide fuzz. He takes the law into his own hands and encounters the corrupt realist cop Frank (noted Seattle character actor Kevin Tighe) who speeds Henry's descent into a personal hell by showing him the seamy, amoral side of police work, on a tension-filled night journey. Chilling and mordant, the film has few false notes, and is tragedy in the best Aristotelian traditions.

This is a film it pays to watch more than once. When I first saw it, I was tempted to dismiss it as merely bizarre. Second time around, I was absorbed by the story and thoroughly gripped by the characters and acting, particularly a superb leading performance by Tom McCamus. Fans of cop shows will also be entertained by some of the clichés we see in the fictional programme where "Henry Adler" has a role. So, if you're into cop shows, good acting and psychology, you can't do much better than this film.