Queen and Country **** (2014, Callum Turner, Caleb Landry Jones, David Thewlis, Richard E Grant, Pat Shortt, Sinéad Cusack) – Movie Review

Writer-director John Boorman’s sequel to his semi-autobiographical charmer Hope and Glory (1987) is an old-fashioned, civilised pleasure.

Callum Turner stars as the grown up 19-year-old Bill Rohan who is drafted into the army, does basic training and becomes a sergeant while the Korean War is raging. At the army base, he and his eccentric best mate, Percy (Caleb Landry Jones), battle their snooty superiors (David Thewlis as their sergeant major, Richard E. Grant as the major) with a whole plotline concerns the theft of the army’s treasured mantle clock.

Meanwhile the duo look for love in town – Aimee-Ffion Edwards and Miriam Rizea. Bill is enchanted by a tragic-looking, slightly older woman he spies in the theatre, and calls Ophelia (Tamsin Egerton). Meanwhile, on Eel Pie Island on the Thames, Bill gathers round with his eccentric family (Sinéad Cusack, David Hayman, John Standing) to watch the Queen’s coronation on the TV.  Vanessa Kirby plays Bill’s married older sister, Dawn, who has a thing about Percy.

Amusing, charming and witty, Queen and Country shows what really good dialogue and situations Boorman is capable of writing. It’s a sweet, really nice retro movie. As director, he brings out all the best in his actor, with Turner and Jones excellent at the centre of it and Thewlis and Grant both very funny.

It’s a longish film at just under two hours, but the time goes pleasurably by in cute nostalgia, helped by its lovely sense of period style as much as its good humour.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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