Jim Broadbent

The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry

06/05/23

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Adapted from her own novel by Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is a curious confection, occasionally poignant and life-affirming, but just as often stepping into quasi-religious territory and offering moments that can most charitably be described as ‘twee’. And it must also be said that the most pertinent word in the title is ‘Unlikely’.

Harold (Jim Broadbent ) and Maureen (Penelope Wilton) are living a life of quiet desperation somewhere in Devon, when a letter arrives from Harold’s old friend, Queenie, who is now in a hospice in Berwick-on-Tweed, approaching the end of her life. It’s clear from Maureen’s reaction that there’s something about her husband’s relationship with this woman that disturbs her, but she stays quiet as he pens a hasty reply to Queenie and then sets off to post his letter. But a chance conversation with a young assistant in the garage, where Harold stops to buy milk, prompts him to make a decision. He will deliver his reply by hand – and he will walk all the way there, a distance of nearly five hundred miles, with no special equipment and no preparation.

At various points along the way, Harold encounters a series of strangers, who in various ways help him to accomplish his self-imposed pilgrimage, but none of these characters is given enough to do to make this anything other than a two-hander – and every step of the way, Harold is haunted by memories of the awful tragedy that changed his life forever…

Watching this is a strangely unsettling experience. One moment I’m thinking that it’s doing something really clever, the next I’m close to tears as a genuinely affecting moment tugs at my heartstrings – but then, all too often, I’m wincing as a really banal revelation comes leaping out of left field to slap me right in the kisser. Both Broadbent and Wilton are seasoned performers, and do the best they can with the material, but I can’t help feeling sorry for Wilton, who – as Maureen – is reduced to spending the first half of this film sulking at home while her husband strides off on what feels like a capricious whim.

The uneven tone coupled with the glacial pace conspire to make the film feel longer than its moderate running time. I haven’t read the source novel, so I don’t know how faithful an adaptation this is but, at the end of the day, there’s something here that doesn’t quite come off. File this one under S for ‘Should-Have-Been-Better’.

2.8 stars

Philip Caveney

The Duke

09/03/22

Cineworld, Edinburgh

The latest entry in the ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ genre is The Duke – the final feature from versatile director, the late Roger Michell. This is the story of the improbably named Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent), an irascible campaigner for pensioners’ rights, women’s suffrage and, in his spare time, a would-be playwright. Quite why his script The Adventures of Susan Christ never found an audience is anybody’s guess.

It’s the early 1960s and ,while England’s capital is celebrating a new-found sense of freedom, life on the gloomy streets of Newcastle is a somewhat bleaker prospect, as Bunton stumbles from job-to-job, constantly losing them because of his propensity to stand up against any signs of injustice he encounters. His long-suffering wife, Dorothy (Helen Mirren), slogs her guts out as a home help to her more affluent neighbour, Mrs Gowling (Anna Maxwell Martin), in order to make ends meet. She is mortified when her husband is obliged to spend a short spell in prison for non-payment of his TV licence (free TV for OAPs being his current pet project).

Meanwhile the couple’s younger son, Jackie (Fionn Whitehead), dreams of building and selling luxury boats, while his brother, Kenny (Jack Bundeira), has his own run-ins with the police to contend with.

And then a valuable painting of The Duke of Wellington by Goya is ‘borrowed’ from the National Gallery – and when it winds up hidden in the back of the Bunton’s wardrobe, it’s only a matter of time before the merde hits the fan.

The Duke is an irresistibly enjoyable piece that manages to evade the cosy complacency of so many films aimed at more mature audiences. Michell’s direction cleverly juxtaposes glossy widescreen shots of London with the grubby, timeworn realities of 60s Newcastle and the humdrum rigours of everyday working-class life are convincingly captured. The Buntons feel like real characters rather than archetypes. A past sadness that Kempton and Dorothy share is skilfully revealed in Richard Bean and Clive Coleman’s canny script – and there’s also a twist to the tale that genuinely takes me by surprise.

But this is surely Broadbent’s film. He’s terrific in the central role, making us genuinely care about a character who was, by all accounts, a bit of a wastrel. The penultimate scene where Bunton stands up in court to discuss the art theft with his barrister, Jeremy Hutchinson (Matthew Goode), had me laughing out loud and is probably worth the price of admission all by itself. Meanwhile, Mirren handles her role as the family matriarch with her usual aplomb and even manages to knit aggressively.

I’m hoping that some enterprising theatre will finally decide to stage one of Bunton’s lost plays – I’d love to see whether Susan Christ achieves her ambitions – but until that happens, The Duke is sure to send you on your way with a smile on your face.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Six Minutes to Midnight

21/04/21

Now TV

Eddie Izzard is well known these days for running marathons, so it’s perhaps appropriate that she spends much of this film’s screen time sprinting headlong across the countryside with vengeful Nazis in hot pursuit. Six Minutes to Midnight is an old-school espionage potboiler, very much in the tradition of The 39 Steps, where stiff-upper-lipped Brits take on Hitler’s double agents in plucky and indomitable style. Co-written by Izzard, the tale is set in the exotic location of Bexhill-on-Sea and is loosely based around a true story.

Izzard stars as Thomas Miller, applying for the role of English teacher at a boarding school for German girls on the eve of the Second World War. The twenty girls in residence – who seem to spend much of their time working on their deportment – are presided over by headmistress, Miss Rocholl (Judi Dench), and by the sole other teacher, Ilse (Carla Juri), who seems thoroughly charming. Miss Rocholl is doubtful about Miller’s abilities, but she’s in an awkward position, as the former English teacher has recently gone missing under mysterious circumstances, so she agrees to a trial period.

It’s not long before Miller has his German pupils merrily singing It’s A Long Way to Tipperary, which is an unusual approach to English, to say the very least – and it comes as no great surprise to discover that Miller isn’t really an English teacher at all…

As the story progresses, it becomes increasingly apparent that hardly anybody here is quite who they appear to be. Is Charlie (Jim Broadbent) really a happy-go-lucky bus driver? Is Captain Drey (James D’Arcy) actually a British secret agent or something decidedly more sinister? And what is the significance of the film’s title?

To be fair, Six Minutes to Midnight makes a decent fist at generating a little mystery, but never really gets up a proper head of steam when it comes to the action sequences – and whenever the story stalls, it’s treated as a cue for Eddie to start running again. Poor Judi Dench has little to do but utter some of the lamest lines in history, as events spiral towards an underwhelming climax.

This is decent enough, but nowhere near as gripping as it needs to be.

3 stars

Philip Caveney

Black 47

08/04/19

A taciturn soldier deserts the army, heads back to his homeland  and finds that, in his absence, his family has been decimated. Powered by a hunger for revenge, he sets off to exact bloody mayhem on the people who have wronged him.

It sounds like the plot of a typical Clint Eastwood western, but here the army in question is the English forces in Afghanistan, the soldier is Feeney (James Frecheville), his family is based in County Connemara and the year is 1847, when the potato famine is wreaking mayhem on the Irish nation. What’s more, the English landlords are turfing out all tenants who cannot afford their rent, or will not ‘take the soup’ – a free handout that is only given to those who will renounce their Catholic faith and become protestants.

Once Feeney is embarked on his violent mission, old comrade, and former Connaught Ranger, Hannah (Hugo Weaving), is recruited to track him down, working alongside young English officer, Pope (Freddie Fox). But it’s a long journey to bring their man to justice and, as they progress along their corpse-littered route, Hannah begins to realise that the real enemy here is not Feeny, but the oppressive English landlords, who seem to regard the native population as vermin to be eradicated.

Lance Daly’s film, Black 47, was never going to be a big hitter at the box office but, like so many other mid-list titles, has found a home on Netflix. It’s a bleak, hard-hitting movie, beautifully filmed in desaturated colour by Declan Quinn and, while it pulls no punches with its political message, it focuses more on the action scenes, of which there are plenty. There are some superb actors in small roles. Stephen Rea shines as local opportunist, Coneely, and Jim Broadbent, usually such a jovial presence, makes a plausible villain as the sneering, venal Lord Kilmichael. There’s even the presence of rising star, Barry Keoghan, playing (of all things) an English soldier.

Perhaps the film can be accused of a certain heavy-handedness (virtually every English character we meet is a contemptible villain) but this is nonetheless a decent action film that keeps us suitably gripped to the final scene.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

King of Thieves

04/09/18

The Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary of April 2015 was always destined to be a contender for big screen dramatisation. This intriguing story, about a bunch of crooked old age pensioners who somehow manage to pull off the biggest theft in history, sounds promising enough on paper and, just three short years after the event, here’s the film, directed by James ‘The Theory of Everything‘ Marsh and boasting a clutch of revered veteran actors in the leading roles. What could possibly go wrong? But what promises to be a cracking crime drama turns out to be more of a mystery movie – the biggest mystery of all being who ever thought this script was ready to go before the cameras. I hate to say it, but this is criminal in the worst sense of the word.

Michael Caine plays Brian Reader, former money launderer, now going straight mostly due to the influence of his wife, Lyn. Played by Francesca Annis, she is the only female to get any lines in this film. Make the most of them, because within minutes of the opening, she is brown bread, Brian is lonely and he’s suddenly open to interesting offers. When a mysterious young man named Basil approaches him proposing one last job, Brian decides to pull together a bunch of his old cronies and go along with the idea. Yes, they’re going to rob Hatton Garden, but guess what? Basil has a key to the building, which somebody lent him ages ago and then forgot about (I know – don’t ask).

Soon Brian has his crew in place. They are Terry Perkins (Jim Broadbent), ‘Kenny’ Collins (Tom Courtenay), Carl Wood (Paul Whitehouse) and Danny James (Ray Winstone). Kenny also brings in his regular fence, Billy ‘the Fish’ Lincoln (Michael Gambon), who he thinks will come in very handy when they’re trying to dispose of stolen diamonds. Getting into the building turns out to be deceptively easy, but of course, no heist ever goes exactly to plan…

You’d think the biggest obstacle in the crooks’ way would be the brick wall they have to drill through but, trust me, this is nothing when compared to the film’s plodding script. It tries to be a treatise on the indignities of ageing but, instead, seems happy enough to have the thieves sitting around complaining about their respective ailments, or how they can’t figure out how to use the internet. Seriously, if you’ve managed to pull together such a complement of respected actors, it might be a good idea to give them some witty dialogue to deliver, but there’s never any danger of that. It’s hard to describe the dismal feeling of watching the great Michael Gambon reduced to the role of an incontinent fish seller, whose few words of dialogue mostly begin with the letter F. Likewise, Jim Broadbent is generally a delight on screen, but who decided to ask him to play a hard man? Courtenay’s character is deaf, which is hilarious in itself, right? And as for Winstone… well, let’s not even go there. Suffice to say this isn’t up there with his work on  Nil By Mouth.

It’s only close to the film’s conclusion where we get a glimpse of what this could have been,  a brief sequence where footage of each character is intercut with glimpses of the actors in their heyday. But it’s too little, too late – and, sadly, by the end of King of Thieves, it’s not just the vault wall that’s been bored.

You have been warned.

2.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Mary and the Witch’s Flower

06/05/18

Studio Ghibli may be defunct, but here’s the first release from its successor, Studio Ponoc, and it’s apparent pretty much from the word go that the resulting film couldn’t be more Ghilbli-esque if it tried. All the familiar tropes are here. A moody young girl with low self-esteem? Check! Stranded in an unfamiliar neighborhood while her parents are away? You’ve got it! A cheeky but handsome boy she at first hates but grows to care about? Oh, yes! Sumptuous representations of the countryside?  All present and correct!

Which might give the impression that Mary and the Witch’s Flower is nothing but a pale imitation of what has gone before and I certainly don’t mean to do that. Suffice to say that the film is very much in the great tradition of Japan’s leading animation studio and, of course, that should be no great surprise, because its director, Hiromasa Yonebayashi (of When Marnie Was There), was one of Ghibli’s most acclaimed animators.

MATWF is based on classic 70s novel The Little Broomstick by Mary Stewart, a book that was clearly a huge influence on  the work of a certain Ms Rowling, and tells the story of young Mary (Hana Sugisaki), who is currently living with her Great Aunt Charlotte (Shinobu Otake) and doing her best to fit in with a rather dull day-to-day existence in the countryside. A chance encounter in the woods leads her to discover the titular flower, said to be able to grant its possessor incredible powers and, shortly thereafter, she finds an ancient broomstick, which – once activated – takes her off to the mysterious Endor College, a school for witches…

As a calling card, Studio Ponoc really couldn’t have done much more to assure Ghibli fans that its towering reputation is in safe hands. There are the kind of gorgeously lush settings we’ve grown to expect, elements of adventure, comedy and suspense and, of course, that all-important atmosphere of magic that will entrance viewers of all ages. There’s also a choice of viewing. Those who, like me, prefer to watch it in the original language with subtitles, can choose to do so – but there is also a dubbed version on offer, voiced by Ruby Barnhill, Kate Winslet and Jim Broadbent.

Mary Stewart would, I’m sure, have been thrilled with this delightfully inventive adaptation of her classic book. It’s sure to captivate a legion of animation fans.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

 

Paddington 2

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10/11/17

Paddington is a tough act to follow. That first film got everything right – a family entertainment that really did have something for everyone. It was also highly successful, so of course there was always going to be a sequel. The modestly titled Paddington 2 says it all. Not Paddington Episode Two, or Paddington Rides Again. No, this does exactly what it says on the tin –  a second adventure featuring Michael Bond’s celebrated ursine hero.

But, can it hope to be as good as its progenitor? The fact that the film’s release has been delayed for a month while the production company scrambles to disassociate itself from a certain Harvey Weinstein doesn’t augur well but, against all the odds, this second installment of the franchise manages to unfold its delightfully silly story without putting a single paw wrong.

The film opens with a flashback to darkest Peru, where Uncle Pastuzu (Michael Gambon) and Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton) first encounter the orphaned bear cub who will become Paddington – and we discover that Aunt Lucy has a longheld ambition to visit the city of London. After the credits we nip smartly back to the present day, where Paddington is now a valued member of the Brown family, helping Henry (Hugh Bonneville), Mary (Sally Hawkins), Jonathan (Samuel Joslin) and Judy (Madeleine Harris). He’s also fitting in nicely with the community of the street on which he lives – cue plenty of cameos from what seems like scores of celebrated comic actors.

But with Aunt Lucy’s 100th birthday approaching, Paddington is looking for a suitable present for his beloved aunt so, when his friend, Mr Gruber, (Jim Broadbent) who runs the local antique shop, shows him a charming (and rather expensive) pop-up book of the city, Paddington resolves to earn enough money to buy it for her. To this end, he tries his hand at window cleaning and barbering, both with suitably hilarious results. Then, by chance, his path crosses with that of has-been actor, Phoenix Buchanan (Hugh Grant), who, it transpires, wants the pop-up book for his own nefarious purposes…

Once again, the screenwriters have managed to capture the spirit of Michael Bond’s evergreen tales, presenting us with a storyline that will have people of all ages laughing uproariously – when they’re not clutching for their handkerchieves. Yes, this is undoubtedly manipulative stuff, but it’s done with such style and such sure-footedness, that you cannot help but be swept along. Scenes where the unthinkable happens and Paddington is actually sentenced to a spell in jail will have the hardest heart breaking into tiny pieces – and the little bear’s developing friendship with prison chef Knuckles McGinty (the ever dependable Brendan Gleeson) is a brilliant conceit which occasionally yields comedy gold.

It doesn’t end there. Paddington 2 is endlessly inventive (scenes where the little bear and his aunt cavort amidst a pop-up recreation of the city of London are a particular highlight). Perhaps the biggest surprise here is Hugh Grant (who, weirdly, we think we spotted walking a tiny dog near Rosslyn Chapel a couple of weeks ago). His turn as the self-obsessed Phoenix Buchanan is one of his best performances ever and he very nearly steals the show from the titular bear – still endearingly voiced by Ben Whishaw.

When you witness some of the absolute dross that passes for ‘family entertainment’ these days, it’s reassuring to see something as lovingly crafted as this. The next question? Can they do it a third time? Well, that remains to be seen. Meanwhile, this will do very nicely indeed.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Brooklyn

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17/02/15

‘Missed this film at the multiplex but caught it at an Indie.’ This is something I seem to be saying with increasing regularity, these days. Take Brooklyn, for instance, critically acclaimed and Oscar-nominated, yet it just about managed to scrape a week at Cineworld, to be replaced no doubt, by Dirty Grandpa or something equally vacuous. We caught it at the Heaton Moor Savoy – and while I’m on the subject, how gratifying it was to see this recently refurbished cinema completely sold out at 3.30 pm on a wet Wednesday afternoon, proving that there certainly is a big audience for this film, provided it’s advertised correctly.

Brooklyn is an unashamedly old-fashioned movie, based on the book by Colm Toibin and adapted for the screen by Nick Hornby. In 1950s Wexford, Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) is failing to flourish. She has no job and (even more shameful in that era) no prospect of marriage, so when New York-based Father Flood (Jim Broadbent) arranges for her to emigrate to New York, she jumps at the chance, leaving her older sister, Rose to look after their widowed mother. Once in Brooklyn, Eilis finds a job in a swish department store and a home in a boarding house on Clinton Street run by Mrs Keogh (a delightful cameo by Julie Walters). But it isn’t long before romance arrives in the shape of Italian-American, Tony (Emory Cohen). As is usual in such stories, the path of true love seldom runs smooth and when Rose dies suddenly, Eilis has to head home for the funeral – and once back in her mother’s vicelike grip, life becomes increasingly complicated…

This is a pleasurable, warm bath of a film – there are no great surprises here, but the 50s setting is beautifully evoked, the performances are uniformly good (particularly from Ronan, who fully deserves her Oscar nod) and the story is strong enough to hook you to the end. There’s enough resonance in what happens here to strike chords with most older viewers and in the end, this is perhaps the film’s greatest strength – an everyday tale of an everyday Irish girl cast adrift in an unfamiliar location.

Charming.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney