My Boy Jack

Excellent cast, beautifully shot and well scripted TV movie about the Kipling family at the start of the First World War. Premiered in the UK on Remembrance Day (11/11) this poignant tale has Daniel Radcliffe in the title role, showing once again (after his on stage appearance in Equus) that there's more to this young actor than the caricature that Harry Potter has become. His clipped and stilted performance completely captured what it must have been like to be the put upon son of a successful, middle-class author in late Edwardian England.

David Haig plays Rudyard Kipling (there's a remarkable resemblance) who many will remember from previous UK TV series 'Thin Blue Line' and 'Soldier Soldier' as well as the massively successful 'Four Weddings and a Funeral'. Haig captures the British Imperialist that Kipling had become perfectly, as well as the emotional turmoil that Kipling went through as he realised just what he had helped to achieve by sending his young son to war. Haig also wrote the original play and screenplay so the resulting TV movie must be pretty much what he wanted.

The supporting players, Kim Catterill as Rudyard's American wife, and Martin McCann as the Irish Guardsman who goes to war with young John to name two, give excellent, measured performances which compliment the two lead roles, giving the whole production a rounded, glossy finish.

This is superb TV catch it if you can (but don't forget the hankies!)

If the point of Brian Kirk's television film, adapted by David Haig from his stage play and starring Haig as the writer Rudyard Kipling, was to show just how much of a horse's ass Kipling actually was and just how awful it is to send young men, some merely boys, out to fight a war, any war, then it succeeded in spades. But I'm not quite sure that was the point and its screening on Remembrance Sunday was no coincidence. While we were certainly there to weep at the loss of Jack, Kipling's son, drummed into the army by his father's jingoism, as well as the hundreds of thousands of others who died in The Great War, I think we were also meant to applaud their bravery, if not their foolishness, then and now. Parallels to present conflicts are unmistakable.

Of its kind, of course, it's well enough made. England was a green and pleasant land, certainly on Kipling's estate. Unfortunately it was also a bit like Neverland with Kipling coming over as a cross between J M Barrie and Gandolf. And the trenches weren't much better. The rain and the mud had a sanitized look about them. We never really got away from the studio and I always think that sort of thing looks better in black and white.

What finally distinguishes it are the two central performances. Haig makes Kipling a splendidly priggish boor proving he is a much better actor than he is a writer. As his sacrificial son, Jack, that sprogget Daniel Radcliffe, (he isn't very tall, is he?), finally shook off the mantle of Harry Potter with a marvelously nuanced study of a boy forced into manhood before his time. (Radcliffe turned eighteen during filming just as his character turned eighteen prior to his death). It was a touching, exploratory piece of acting that seemed to me to be as much about Radcliffe as it was about Jack. Both players add a dimension to the drama that it lacked elsewhere and if it finally moved me, and it did, it was due to their performances. In every other respect it's just a typical made-for-television costume drama.

My Boy Jack is a made for TV movie starring Daniel Radcliffe as Rudyard Kipling's son Jack as a teenager preparing for "The Great war" (WW1). Shown on Remembrance Day, here in the uk on terrestial TV (ITV1), it is a timely reminder of what people of different classes and backgrounds went through and the very different attitudes compared to today (..and some similar ones). It is well written and acted with a good pace and shows the character's as well rounded. I have never seen any of the Harry Potter movies (not my type of thing) so it was nice to see Radcliffe in action and very good he was too. This movie is a lot better than a lot of films at the cinema and for awhile you can still catch it on ITV.COM for free (Don't know how long it will be there) Definitely worth a watch!

As a Kipling fan from the age of 8, 50 years and more ago now, I was knocked out by "My Boy Jack." David Haig, as writer and actor, is beyond brilliance, and though I found Daniel Radcliffe a bit stiff and modern, he too was excellent.

Kim Cattrall: surprisingly good. But I was totally distracted by her American pretending to be English pretending to be American bizarre accent. Let her use her natural speech (and yes, I know she was born and spent time in England) or else hire a good dialogue coach.

Though the whole production was gorgeous (Bateman's!) and moving in its interrelationships, the bookending of the scenes with friends King George V and Rud just tore my heart out. The King having just lost a "boy Jack" of his own (young Prince John, an epileptic, subject of another fantastic Masterpiece series, "The Lost Prince", some years ago), Rudyard recites the poem he wrote for his Jack. I sobbed through the whole recital, and was still weeping when I went to sleep a few hours later. Staggeringly wondrous. And cathartic in the sense in which all tragedies should be. Fine, fine work by all concerned.

Sad, extremely well acted tale of the senselessness of war and one family's experience. The father in this story is famous but it doesn't make their struggles any less universal. Daniel Radcliffe is terrific once again showing that he will be able to have a lifelong career far removed from Harry Potter. This is really a four person story and he is matched in excellence by the other three players, David Haig, Kim Cattrall and Carey Mulligan. Kim completely moves away from her Sex and the City persona with a performance of quiet control. She's always been a versatile actress but her identification with Samantha is such that her former more varied work is often forgotten. A very moving story presented with great skill.