Queen and Country

I am a huge fan of Hope and Glory and had high hopes for Queen and Country. The entire experience of the new film was very flat. It was like taking a cross country trip focused on making exactly the same distance every day and staying in safe hotels. Nothing stood out, except possibly some bad (over?) acting. Most of the cast was adequate, but Caleb Landry Jones and Aimee-Ffion Edwards mostly just over-acted, as did almost everyone playing someone in a position of authority in the military. Of course, dealing with a plot that made little sense probably did not help. The best part of the film takes place on the water where Callum Turner does a nice job of making us believe it was his natural habitat mostly by becoming more confident instead of the fish-out-of-water he usually is (that is about as deep as this moving gets). Unfortunately, there were also some lame scenes of filming on the water that also added nothing. The only good news for my wife and me is that one of our tickets was free, so we only wasted half as much money.

The post-war period often seems like a bit of a black hole for films. Aside from the films made at the time which dealt with the issues the population faced, most notably Italian Neorealism, contemporary films prefer to explore the actual conflict themselves. More drama is to be found there. But while World War II was 'the' war, the conflict never really stopped, and Britain still had mandatory military service at the age of 18, with deployment to Korea for their civil war a real proposition. This is what John Boorman focuses on for what is probably his final film, and a sequel to his most famous work, the 1987 mildly autobiographical piece Hope And Glory.

We are told the story of Bill, a young boy in the first film. He has grown up into quite the strapping young fellow, and he received his notice for mandatory army service. There he quickly befriends Percy, and a bond forms. But this bond is hardly the centre of the film. It stretches far beyond that, as Bill deals with the army, love and his family. This is all well paced handled by Boorman, who is probably best known, aside from Hope And Glory, for directing Deliverance.

The acting is quite spotty on a case by case basis, Callum Turner does very well as the protagonist Bill Rohan, but you can't help but think he was constantly being overshadowed by a couple of doses of overacting. Being manic or excitable is all well and good, but there occasions where people were channelling their inner Joker or Harley Quinn. On the subject of acting, David Thewlis (of Harry Potter fame) is present and he is phenomenal, one of my favourite acting performances of the year.

Furthermore, the script isn't perfect either. There were too many logical inconsistencies, especially early on, where background character information is introduced in very lazy ways, usually dialogue. It's frustrating to see two characters talking to each other about things they clearly already know, and that it's only for the audience's benefit.

What is best about the film is that it tells the story of war really well. This was something a film like Fury really fell short at, relying on clichés to tell a heroic story. Even though there are very few scenes of combat, Queen And Country definitely gets right what Fury got wrong, showing the horrors of war, what it does to people and how anyone can be a victim or a casualty. That goes a long way in my book.

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Writer and director John Boorman introduced us to some of these characters back in 1987 with the marvellous war time tale – 'Hope and Glory'. Bill is now ten years old and has been sent off to do his National Service – only we are now involved in the Korean War (which still limps on to this day – peace never having been formally agreed). He and his mate Percy though end up stuck in base camp teaching the typing pool.

Life in the camp is far from fun and games and the strict Regimental Sergeant Major and Sergeant Major make their life a bit of a hell – so they create diversions, shenanigans and go chasing the girls near the base by way of diversion. However, as with all diversions – whether on camp or elsewhere – there will be consequences.

Now this is a very well made film, period detail is great etc. The make up is all good and the acting is generally very good. Caleb Landry Jones as Percy Hapgood though struck me as miscast – his accent is unplacable (perhaps as he is American?); he does the emotion well but seems a bit unhinged – which may indeed have been the point. David Thewlis is probably the most stand out performance as the irritatingly unlikeable Bradley – and shows how broad his acting abilities are. Overall though a very good film and if you were a fan of the original, then you will probably want to see – but the jokes are much thinner on the ground here, but it still has a vibrancy that evokes the time and the passion in an endearing way.

John Boorman's final film is the sequel to his earlier film, Hope and Glory, the last of his films that received serious critical and awards consideration, and the only other film of his that's explicitly autobiographical. I'd say that all of his films are somewhat autobiographical at a certain level, he's just that kind of artist, but this is supposed to be a recreation of a certain aspect of his life. I thought on both of these films that they would be marked departures from the thematic focuses of the movies around them, but I was wrong on both counts. Queen and Country is a capstone of the man's career, boiling all of his ideas into one film like he knew this was his last. Since we're nine years on and there's no indication of any efforts to put another film together, it seems like Boorman decided to make this his one last statement, and it's a nicely packaged one.

Bill Rohan (Callum Turner) has grown up into a young man and must report for his military service of two years. Along with his friend, Percy (Caleb Landry Jones), they report and go through six weeks of basic training. They do not get sent to Korea, though, being promoted to teach typing. Under the exacting and cruel auspices of Sergeant Major Bradley (David Thewlis), a closed-minded, by the books NCO that uses the smallest of infractions, like an undone button on a uniform, to report his inferior officers to his superior officer, Bill and Percy chafe and hope for a break from their unfair prison of military life. They commiserate with Private Redmond (Pat Shortt) about their situation, but there's little they can do against Bradley since he's so by the book.

The film continues Bill's sexual awakening by giving him an opportunity to meet girls at a more appropriate age. The first are a pair of girls that he meets with Percy, mostly Sophie (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), a nurse in the local military hospital, but Bill gets caught up with the sight of a mysterious and elegant woman (Tamsin Egerton) with an obvious air of sadness about her. She refuses to give him her name, letting him call her Ophelia. At the same time, Bill's older sister Dawn (Vanessa Kirby) returns from Canada after having married her Canadian flyer beau from the previous film. It should be noted that the image used on all of the posters for the film shows the moment when Dawn comes home and has a playful moment with Bill on their island home called The Sphinx. It makes them look like lovers in the posters, but they're not. It's such a weird thing to focus on, probably trying to take advantage of the fact that Kirby is a slightly bigger star than Egerton. Anyway, Dawn and Percy get along together while Ophelia comes by the house to visit with Bill and his family.

Where the thematic focuses of Boorman's career peek through is around the class differences in English society (represented by Ophelia's true identity), something he touched on a lot through his career in different ways (the Eternals ruling the world in Zardoz or the prince and his relationships with the poor people around him in Leo the Last as examples), the brutality of power in the modern world (like in Point Blank and Where the Heart Is), and the thin veneer of civilization falling away to reveal the brutal nature of man (like in Deliverance or Excalibur). None of these ideas is front and center and the reason for the film, it's more purely autobiographical than thematic, but they are all present in different amounts, which I find interesting.

That last idea, the thin veneer of civilization falling away to reveal the heart of darkness in men is tied to a subplot about Percy, wanting to get back at his superior officers for their succession of little tyrannies against him, steals a prized clock from the officers' mess, a clock given to a commander of the regiment a hundred years ago by Queen Victoria. The loss of that clock turns the officers completely against the men, tearing apart the camp in search of it. It also extends to the treatment of Bradley, with the young men finding a way to hoist him by his own petard, which breaks him (touching on some PTSD he was dealing with after his service in WWII), leaving a power vacuum in the office for a short time, essentially a state of nature that Redmond ends up reveling in while Bill tries to reestablish order by giving orders to Redmond, that Redmond refuses. It's a small moment, but it obviously points to something that Boorman had been touching on since Catch Us If You Can.

The heart of the film is Bill's awakening into a changing world. It's not a coincidence that Boorman chose to tell this story of his around the death of King George VI and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, including a nice scene on his little island home with his family, including his father Clive (David Hayman, the only returning cast member with a bad black wig to hide his age), where they gather around the new television to watch the coronation, and a light debate comes as they all keep their eyes glued to the screen about the use of monarchy and tradition in the modern world. Bill himself comes softly on the side of the idea that the monarchy is an institution past its time, but it's more introspective, the kind of thing an older man facing his sunset years might say instead of one of youth, a young man filled with opinions he knows are right. I seriously doubt the real Boorman was this circumspect. I mean...I've seen Zardoz.

This really is the work of an older man looking back at his life and reflecting. There's a certain melancholy quality, even when focusing on more manic episodes like the stealing of the clock, that give the film this overall warm aura. The emotional journey that Bill takes through his burgeoning adulthood, seeing first romances rise and fall, friendships strained and strengthened, and the country around him changing, ends up being a nice testament not only to Boorman's youth but also to his entire career. It's definitely not his best work, but it's also definitely not his worst. It's nice.

Oh Dear, this is a stinker! Only 2 couples in at the Curzon, Victoria last night. The rest of the world must have known something we didn't. The other couple lasted 30 minutes.......we gave it another 15 or so before deciding it was beyond redemption and that we had better things to do with the next hour. We presume it ran on to an empty house. Dreadful, clunky script and dialogue, cut-out cartoon characters playing simple stereotype roles, wooden, stilted acting, very weird accents (Caleb Landry Jones apparently occupying a class and region of his own devising). Sometimes I thought we had stumbled into an episode of Porridge or maybe Dad's Army. Caleb seemed to be channeling Oliver Reed at his overacting worst, combined with Norman Wisdom or maybe Lee Evans. Sorry, but this was shameful and shouldn't have been allowed to escape onto the screen. Was this a case of Emperor's New Clothes? Was no one prepared to stand up to Boorman at any stage and say "enough"? Was this posted in as a contractual obligation? Yes, I respect the career, but this was a sad sign off and not worthy. This is one that the cast, pretty much without exception, will wish they could deny being involved with and will look at from behind their hands when its inevitable Christmas TV showing comes round in a year or 2. 1 star if I'm generous.