Lejink

Based on a contemporary novel, the jumping-off point for this Film 4 production was very obviously the Jamie Bulger case where in Merseyside, two ten-year-old boys abducted and barbarically murdered their two-year-old victim and after serving their sentences in juvenile detention, were given new identities and relocated to a different part of the country in an attempt to rehabilitate them.

The narrative here for dramatic purposes makrs a number of important changes, with the victim altered to a young girl the same age as her two assailants, one of the two, the likely main perpetrator, is killed in prison by fellow-inmates while we see the other, now grown to manhood carry out an act of heroism in rescuing a little girl from a car crash scene. Ironically however, it's the local publicity arising from his good deed which exposes his identity to the national press baying for blood and sends him on the run with predictable consequences.

The film runs two time-lines, one showing the adult Eric Wilson, now renamed Jack Burridge, under the care of his case-handler Peter Mullan, who encourages him to rebuild his life and reintegrate into society, the other showing his childhood in a loveless home, friendless and bullied at school before he falls in with a nasty and violent fellow-truant whose sidekick he willingly becomes.

Both stories take their expected courses, the first culminating in the young girl's murder, thankfully shown off-screen and the second in grown-up Jack's unmasking as Eric leading to the downbeat conclusion.

I would imagine there would be some debate over the treatment of the subject matter. It's half an hour into the film before we are fully appraised of Jack's past, by which time, we've built up a rapport with this shy, awkward young man trying to settle back into society after serving what we assume is a routine spell in prison. We see him make friends at work and fall into a relationship with a slightly older woman before an act of jealousy by Mullen's returning son blows his cover. Was it right to humanise this convicted child-killer, especially bearing in mind we're shown a scene of him regressing into brutal violence, albeit it's an intervention to protect his mate and partly attributable to the influence of drink and drugs on the night. I know my own thoughts on the justice Jamie Bulger's killers received, but the film asks challenging questions about the treatment of child-murderers and a convicted felon's right to rehabilitation, once released from jail, especially for the worst crimes.

Shot in super-realistic fashion, with lots of handheld camera shots and extreme close-ups, there's a remarkable performance in the lead part by Andrew Garfield in his debut role and he's well supported by the sympathetic, intuitive work of the supporting cast, especially Mullan and Katie Lyons as the girl falls for.

What let the film down for me were the exaggerated plot-points, especially the contrived ways and means by which Eric was outed, his last meeting with his girl and, I suppose, his eventual demise which carries with it the whiff of martyrdom.

Nevertheless, this was a mostly uncompromising and thought-provoking, if arguably unbalanced movie on the eternal subjects of crime and punishment, reform and incarceration and society's tolerance or intolerance over the evil that people do.

I'm about three quarters of the way through Elton's "Me" biography written some twenty years later than this programme which I'm finding to be a very frank, garrulous and entertaining read. I was aware of this notorious, if that's not too strong a word, fly-on-the-wall television documentary produced by the singer's then partner, now husband, David Furnish and Elton mentions it at some length in the book.

The camera follows Elton around in the year 1995, when he was in the act of releasing his "The Big Picture" album, one, coincidentally, which his long-term songwriting partner. Bernie Taupin has since described as the worst of Elton's career. I am a fan of Elton's. But I haven't listened to much of his work beyond the mid-80's and trusting to Bernie's judgment, I don't think this is an album I'll be getting acquainted with anytime soon.

Throughout his book, Elton is very open about his mood swings, OCD and propensity to spend money any way he chooses fit. We see all of this in the documentary, where he commendably allows the all-seeing camera to access all areas of his lifestyle. One thing that surprised me in the documentary were the scenes where he sits dutifully alongside his mother, whereas in the book, he barely has a good word to say for her or his dad, come to that.

His book frankly reveals and confronts what he terms the Dwight (his real name) family temper and his various insecurities so that when he achieved huge success in the early 70's, he was able to use his new found fame and fortune to feed them. This is manifest in the documentary as we see him on holiday in France where he appears to have taken with him about a year's worth of clothes, or meticulously filing away random CD's in his huge music library or just throw a hissy-fit over a large floral display over which he disapproves. And yet these are elsewhere contrasted with the great good he does in generously and fulsomely supporting AIDS charities through his own Foundation.

The programme is dizzying at times as it follows him and his entourage, including his rather brusque, disrespectful PA, with whom the book tells me he unsurprisingly parted company some years later. We see him at his two main homes, Woodside in England and another in Atlanta, Georgia, an unusual choice I'd have said, as well as on tour, doing video shoots, press conferences and even at the Academy Award ceremony collecting the Oscar for Best Song of the year.

We've all seen backstage snippets of the stars but this 75 minute programme did so much more extensively and revealingly than before. Elton does come across as over-indulgent, moody and truculent but also as caring, open, hard-working, certainly eccentric but often funny (well, you never know when you might need a tiara or two!). Did I like him as a person, I think so, but just don't get in his way, especially when he's playing tennis.

I wasn't surprised to learn that this contemporary procedural thriller set in Scotland, principally Edinburgh but also the fictional island of Mhor, was based on the works of a Danish novelist which have indeed previously been made into movies in that country, as the whole enterprise has a distinct Scandi-noir feel to it. The maverick cop leading the investigation, the sinister kidnappers of the imprisoned barrister, her cruel and unusual punishment and naturally the tortuous plot stretched out over nine twisty-turny episodes are all recognisable tropes, in fact all it was lacking was Matthew Goode's Carl Morck character wearing a big stripey jumper.

It starts with a bang, literally as we see Morck and his partner Hardy attend the murder in the flat of an old man alongside a young plain-clothes cop only to be disturbed by a gunman who kills the policeman and whose next shot, like the bendy-bullet in the JFK assassination manages to simultaneously paralyse Hardy and shatter Morck's jaw.

This, however, is only a sidebar to the main plot-point which concerns a rising female barrister, Chloe Pirrie's Merritt Lingard, who whilst on a ferry with her mentally disabled younger brother, is abducted and incarcerated in a hyperbaric chamber where she's kept for four years. Her captors are a bewigged older woman with a nasty tongue and a younger man with violent tendencies who are determined to make her recall an incident in her past which caused the death of, as we later learn, the son and brother of her jailers.

Missing, presumed dead, Merritt's disappearance becomes the first assignment of a new cold-case unit set up to rehabilitate Morck on his return to work by his gruff female boss. He's joined by two very disparate colleagues, one a quiet-spoken Syrian immigrant ex-detective and the other an enthusiastic young spiky-haired female, herself coming to terms with a recent on-the-job trauma.

Morck fits the classic anti-hero detective mould we've been watching on film and television since the year dot. He's taciturn, moody and single-minded, definitely not a team-player but underneath his tough-guy exterior, he's loyal, certainly to his hospitalised former partner and later to his erstwhile subordinates who both however have to work extremely hard to win his grudging recognition and respect.

Much of the action, or inaction in point of fact, takes place in the prison-chamber where Merritt is kept in what must have been a physically demanding part for the actress to play. Gradually, Morck and his team untangle the various strands which will lead them to her which coincides almost exactly with her finally learning why she's been taken and so identify her tormentors.

Matthew Goode is very good(e) as the only Englishman on the force. With more sharp edges than a chainsaw, we see these gradually dulled in his interaction with his rebellious stepson with whom he shares his flat, the female psychiatrist Kelly McDonald, assigned to his rehabilitation and to his two eager assistants. For me, Alexej Manvelov, who has actually starred in previous Nordic noir productions, stole the acting plaudits and I also commend the work naturally of Pirrie, but also Leah Byrne as Goode's other gopher although I was less taken with the showy acting of McDonald and especially that of Kate Dickie as Goode's hectoring CO.

With other familiar Scottish faces in the cast like Mark Bonnar as Merritt's boss and Sanjeev Kohli, as Morck's new-age lodger, this high quality production, with, let me add, impressive background music, led my wife and I a merry dance before arriving at its exciting conclusion.

Let's hope we see Morck and his misfits in action again around Edinburgh. And can someone please have him adopt a dog called Mindy next time just to put a smile on my face.