Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 30 October
The Great Escaper (Parker, 2023)
Correction
In yesterday’s ‘new releases’ newsletter I managed to mangle the title of the Irish hip-hop extravaganza as Kneebone instead of Kneecap. The error is regretted. I still hope to review it here next week.
Michael Caine’s final* film has just arrived as a streaming option in Aotearoa so I thought I would revisit my review from March this year:
Watching ‘national treasure’ Michael Caine twinkle his way through the crowd-pleasing The Great Escaper, I was minded to go back to a review I wrote of another of his films about England, Harry Brown, which came out in 2010. We thought Caine was on his last legs then, at the age of 74.
Harry Brown was a nasty, reactionary piece of work about a pensioner who becomes a vigilante on the streets of his council estate. At the time I wrote:
“Making the ineffectual detective (Emily Mortimer) female just accentuates the reactionary attitudes on display – it’s anti-feminist as well as anti-progressive. This shouldn’t be surprising territory for Caine who once abandoned Britain when he decided that he didn’t enjoy paying the tax that made things like police forces and education systems possible.”
It was a good performance in an ugly film, but now he’s put in an even better performance in a much nicer film. A much more thoughtful film.
It’s based on the true story of Bernard Jordan, the 89-year-old Navy veteran who – after missing the deadline for the official D-Day 70th anniversary celebrations – decides to make his own way across the channel anyway and pay his respects.
Caine pulls out all the stops here. He is a cheeky chappie around the staff and a lonely and frightened old man on the ferry. And then, when he gets to France, he is a grieving and traumatised old soldier. It’s tremendous work and he’s clearly taking his own masterclass advice about how to work from the eyes first.
But he’s not the only one giving a lesson. John Standing as the toff who takes Bernard under his wing, has a moment that made the audience at my screening gasp – that’s why films with audiences are still the best – and Glenda Jackson takes a role that could easily have been a single note but imbues it with some of the fierceness she showed in both her early performances and her political career.
For all the jingoistic context, and the suppressed grief, this is a love story and a moving one at that.
Also in that March 2024 newsletter: Let the Dance Begin from Argentina, faith film Cabrini, kiddie-horror Imaginary, and the deeply insightful British indie How to Have Sex.
*He’s not dead but appears determined to retire – at the age of 91. Maybe he should move into directing …
Where to watch The Great Escaper
Aotearoa: Streaming on Neon
Australia: Streaming on Prime Video or Binge
Canada & USA: Currently unavailable
Ireland & UK: Streaming on Sky