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 70^th 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