Category: Film about friendship

An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)

Classic 80s romance? Or is it, in fact, a searing kitchen-sink drama about class and depression? One of the great mis-remembered films of all time

Director: Taylor Hackford

Cast: Richard Gere (Zach Mayo), Debra Winger (Paula Pokrifki), Louis Gossett Jnr (Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley), David Keith (Sid Worley), Lisa Blount (Lynette Pomeroy), Robert Loggia (Byron Mayo), Lisa Elbacher (Casey Seeger), Tony Plana (Emiliano Santos Della Serra), Harold Sylvester (Lionel Perryman), David Caruso (Topper Daniels)

An Officer and Gentleman is remembered as a sweep-you-off-your-feet romance, with power-ballads underplaying attractive Hollywood stars passionately proclaiming their love. It ain’t anything like that. This proto-Top Gun – a film it has strong similarities to in structure and design – is actually a kitchen-sink drama masquerading as a feelgood movie, with a final romantic image and “Up Where We Belong” leaving a deceptive memory behind. Where Top Gun is loud, brash and fundamentally reassuring and straight-forward, An Officer and a Gentleman is jagged, surprisingly difficult and unsettling. Put it this way: Tom Cruise doesn’t call anyone the c-bomb in Top Gun.

Zach Mayo (one of Richard Gere’s legendary performances, the memory of which guided much of the rest of his career far more than its reality) is a Navy-brat determined to be nothing like his alcoholic, whoring dad (Robert Loggia). He’s going to graduate from Naval Flight Candidate school and become “an officer and a gentleman”. Zach is a damaged soul, defensive, closed-off and selfish, a smarmy, cruel loner interested only in what he can get out of any relationship. The film is about whether Zach will learn to become a sympathetic, caring person, rather than a resentful douche.

There are three influences that might just change him. Firstly, fellow trainee Sid (David Keith), from a Naval officer family, attending because his deceased brother can’t. The second is training officer and uncompromising disciplinarian Sgt Emil Foley (Louis Gossett Jnr). And, finally, factory worker Paula (Debra Winger), one of the local women officer candidates are warned are intent on bagging a husband by fair or foul. Each will play a different role in making Zach a fully rounded person.

Hackford’s film is a tough, hardened one that takes a long hard look at mental health, guilt, suicide, parental resentment and a host of other complex issues. Any romantic moment is matched with one of pain, fury or characters doubled over with guilt and shame. It dives deep into its flawed hero and shows how someone can, almost unwittingly, be reconstructed into something warmer. It does all this in grimy, scruffy settings with characters making desperate choices motivated by poverty and lack of choices.

It opens with a shaggy-haired, scruffy Gere starring into a mirror in a dark motel room while his father is passed out in bed with two prostitutes. We are constantly reminded of Zach’s working-class background, his life growing up trailing behind his (largely indifferent) father after the suicide of his mother, left to fend for himself in the rough and tumble of the Philippine streets. At naval school, the same chippy resentment of how people perceive his roots persists – along with the lessons he has spent his whole life learning: that he should count on no-one but himself.

Zach doesn’t believe he’s worth loving. Facing abandonment issues (of different kinds) from both his parents, he doesn’t give a toss about anyone and expects them to feel the same. He sets up a grift selling pre-polished buckles and boots to his fellow candidates, only helping them for a price. He completes exercises alone, cheats in aeronautical class, and gloats as he passes anyone on physical trials. When dating Paula, he frequently retreats into cold rudeness when conversation turns to anything emotional, and repeatedly claims he wants nothing more than a bit of fun. It all stems – as Paula realises – from a defensive hostility, pushing people away before they can leave him.

His lack of team-playing is identified early by Foley as his Achilles heel. Louis Gossett Jnr won an Oscar for his impressively nuanced work here. At first Foley seems an almost unbelievably horrible man, a bully dropping racist and homophobic slurs with casual ease, who makes it his mission to drive his candidates out of the programme (right down to bragging that he chisels a mark on his swivel stick whenever another one drops out).

However, Hackford and Gossett Jnr skilfully show this is, to a degree, a show: Foley is tough because the military is tough, and deep down he does care. Candidates slowly earn his respect (female candidate Seeger may fail to climb a wall, but goddamn he respects her guts) and he quietly goes to great lengths to support them. Foley’s act is intended to get them to excel – and he’ll be proud of them when they do, just as they will be grateful to him. The strength of Gossett Jnr’s performance mean his scenes dominate the narrative (at the cost of the romance), but this is to the film’s benefit.

Interestingly, that romance is often the least effective part of the film. Gere and Winger have fine chemistry (despite, allegedly, not getting on) but the narrative often takes sudden time jumps. From one scene to another they’ll go from together to split up, and the film never quite manages to show us naturally how this is changing Zach. Instead, it frequently stops to tell us this, with on-the-nose conversations. Winger is good, but the relationship feels forced – as if it a film couldn’t exist without a romance, when actually Paula could be removed altogether and it wouldn’t really change the film.

It’s forced perhaps because what really feels like it changes Zach is the friendship with Sid. Played very well by a sensitive David Keith, Sid is everything Zach is not. Confident, happy to help others, a natural leader and team player. Under the surface he isn’t – doubtful and insecure – but the friendship between them is the spark that changes Zach. Sid is, much like Goose in Top Gun, the sacrificial pal, but this sacrifice promotes real growth in Zach. The parallel romance between Sid and gold-digger Lynette (a fine Lisa Blount) is also an effective commentary on Zach and Paula, both characters being mirror images of the leads.

The film culminates in that romantic sweep-you-off-your-feet moment in the factory: but that feels like it belongs in a different film than the hard-boiled one we’ve been watching of a man confronting his fear of failure and lack of self-worth. Gere, by the way, is very good as Zach – his smirk a defensive screen for a host of psychological problems (few actors would have been willing to be as unlikeable as Gere is here). An Officer and a Gentleman is really a character study in working-class resentments, but somehow is mis-remembered as the quintessential 80s romance. It truly isn’t. Instead Hackford’s film – flawed as it is – is smarter and pricklier than that.

The Woman King (2022)

Punchy historical action epic is very entertaining (if not hugely original narratively) as well as being a triumph of representation

Director: Gina Prince-Bythe

Cast: Viola Davis (General Nanisca), Thuso Mbedu (Nawi), Lashana Lynch (Izogie), Sheila Atim (Amenza), John Boyega (King Ghezo), Hero Fiennes Tiffin (Santo Ferreira), Adrienne Warren (Ode), Jayme Lawson (Shante), Masali Baduza (Fumbe), Angélique Kidjo (The Meunon), Jimmy Odukoya General Oba Ade), Thando Dlomo (Kelu), Jordan Bolger (Malik)

It’s 1823 in the West African Kingdom of Dahomey. The kingdom is trapped in the middle of a host of competing interests: most notably the rival Oyo empire and the European slavers controlling the region’s main port. Dahomey depends for its security on the Agojie, an elite group of women warriors commanded by their respected general Nanisca (Viola Davis). War brews between Dahomey and Oyo, and Nanisca is pushing King Ghezo (John Boyega) to end Dahomey’s involvement in the slave trade. At the same time, a new Agojie recruit, Nawi (Thuso Mbedu) brings memories of past traumas flooding back to Nanisca – might she and Nawi have some lost bond?

The Woman King is a pulsating action film, a mixture of Braveheart and Black Panther (it even has a cold open, as the Agojie storm an Oyo village to save captured Dahomey citizens bound for the slave ships, that feels like a straight lift from the latter film’s opening). Proudly celebrating both women and black people (men are very much in secondary roles, while the only white character is a hypocritical slaver played with relish by Hero Fiennes Tiffin), it’s a punch in the solar plexus for what’s been a male-dominated genre.

Watching it I suddenly realised, half-way through, that if the film had been made 10 or 15 years ago, the plucky new recruit having to prove she belonged among the Agojie would have been played by a white actress. There would have been a flashback to the child being found by the Agojie and then a montage of her searching from fear to longing to emulate the women around her. Like Cruise in The Last Samurai, she would have become the best-of-the-best, accepted by her new black sisterhood. It’s a triumph that Hollywood no longer needs stories like this filtered through white eyes before they would even consider bringing them to the screen.

Instead, the focus is strongly on a story that wants to celebrate the rich culture and history of African kingdoms. Dahomey’s civilisation, advanced farming and irrigation, egalitarian culture and humane religious and spiritual practices, are shown in loving detail. Their tenuous position as a small kingdom surrounded by rivals is carefully presented, just as the corrupting nature of European powers is made clear. It is they who have turned slavery – an ever-present in African history – into an industry that dominates the African economy and has led to a subtle devaluation of human lives that many Africans openly collaborate in.

In this, Prince-Bythe’s tightly directed film juggles a coming-of-age story for Nawi with a coming-to-terms story for Nanisca. It’s a film that manages to present both in the context of a series of action set-pieces and exciting training montages (the Agojie effectively have to complete a massive obstacle course to qualify as a member of the sisterhood). To be honest, much in the film isn’t really that original, more a remix of set-pieces and ideas from similar films. What makes it stand out is the representation and the context where it is taking place.

It also allows impressive actors to take on roles way outside of public expectations. None more so than Viola Davis, whose pumped up physique shatters any perceptions of what you might expect. This is a tour-de-force role from Davis, as she plays a defiant and strong woman, secretly terrified of trauma in her own past (and worries about her own weakness) who leads by charismatic example, but is just as capable of unjust slap-downs. She’s a woman struggling to embrace all facets of herself, doing so in the spotlight of a whole country looking to her for leadership. It makes for a powerful performance from Davis, perfectly fusing her skill at playing matronly warmth, imperious distance and deep reserves of determination and courage.

There are similarly excellent performances from a uniformly strong cast, with Lashana Lynch a stand-out as a courageous fighter who surprises herself with her mentorship abilities. Thuso Mbedu gives a star-making turn as Nawi, a young woman who matches Nanisca for bull-headedness and suppressed self-doubt, who reveals herself as a natural leader. Shelia Atim is excellent as Nanisca’s level-headed trusted number two, while John Boyega walks perfectly a fine-line of a man teetering between being a wise leader and a playboy.

They are helped by a film that may lack originality in its plotting and structure, but makes up for that with its warmth for its characters, and the gritty, involving realism of its shooting. Prince-Bythe keeps the pace of the film running smoothly and stages each of the film’s many set-pieces with a dynamism that keep you on the edge of your seat. She also successfully manages to incorporate some searching material around Nanisca’s past traumas without being exploitative.

Historically, the film is a little dubious, walking a carefully curated line on Dahomey’s involvement in slavery (in many ways it might have been better if the film was set in a fictional kingdom inspired by Dahomey). It doesn’t dwell on the Agojie chaining up their captives to be shipped to the slavery markets. It pushes an anti-slavery message strongly – but ignores the historical fact that the real Ghezo continued in the trade until the bitter end. (Legitimate points could have been made about his right to the same compensation as plantation owners elsewhere.) There is a complex, difficult story here that the film romanticises into something with cleaner rights and wrongs.

But, with a history of poor representation and white-only-lens view on African culture in film, you can forgive a film aiming to redress that balance. Strongly directed, exciting and crowd-pleasing, with well-drawn characters played with real skill by a very strong cast, it might recycle many ideas from other films, but it does it with a compelling freshness.

True Grit (1969)

The Duke wins an Oscar in this solid Western (already old-fashioned in 1969) put together with a professional solidity

Director: Henry Hathaway

Cast: John Wayne (Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn), Glen Campbell (La Boeuf), Kim Darby (Mattie Ross), Jeremy Slate (Emmett Quincy), Robert Duvall (Lucky Ned Pepper), Dennis Hopper (Moon), Alfred Ryder (Goudy), Strother Martin (Colonel Stonehill), Jeff Corey (Tom Chaney), John Fiedler (Daggett)

By 1969 John Wayne had been pulling his six shooters against rascals and rapscallions for thirty years, ever since making one of the all-time great entries in Stagecoach. He’d been an American icon, box-office gold and practically the Mount Rushmore of Hollywood. What he never really had was recognition that, underneath the drawl, he was a fine actor who knew his business. He’d only had the single Oscar nomination in 1949, so by 1969 there was a sentimental urge to correct that – especially since illness had already seen the Duke (one of the first major stars to be open and frank about his cancer and urge others to get checks) lose a lung a few years previously.

And correct that they did, as Wayne beat out two respected thespians (the perennially unlucky Burton and O’Toole) as well as the whipper-snapper stars of Midnight Cowboy (the sort of cowboy film the Duke would never even consider making!) to scoop the Best Actor prize for taking a character-role lead (all Wayne roles are lead roles) in True Grit. Wayne was “Rooster” Cogburn, a hard-drinking but hard-riding, always-gets-his-man US Marshal, hired by Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) the teenager daughter of a murdered father to track down his killer Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey). Rooster develops an avuncular relationship with Mattie, despite his penchant to get pissed and (of course!) eventually proves he has the ‘true grit’ that made Mattie hire him in the first place.

True Grit is a traditional yarn, directed with a smooth competence (but lack of inspiration) by Henry Hathaway. It must have felt quite a throwback in 1969: you could imagine it pretty much would have been shot-for-shot identical if it had been filmed in 1949 (especially since Wayne had been playing the veteran since at least Fort Apache). Compared to other major Westerns made that year – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and, especially, the grim nihilism of The Wild Bunch – True Grit looks like the cosiest film imaginable. It even shies away from the book’s ending where Mattie loses an arm after a snake bite (something the, frankly superior, Coen Brother’s remake would not do 40 years later).

It does feel odd to see Wayne, that bastion of old-school Hollywood, sharing the screen with New Hollywood icons like Dennis Hopper (playing a yellow-bellied squealer at the baddies hideout) and Robert Duvall (a belated villain, looking uncomfortable in this genre saddle-flick as a bad-to-the-bone gang leader). But Hathaway makes sure it’s The Duke’s show. Which it is from start-to-finish.

Rooster isn’t really a stretch for Wayne. Compared to his work in The Searchers and Red River, Cogburn is a cosy and straight-forward hero, a straight-shooter who always holds to his word. But it’s a perfect showpiece for his charisma. Wayne shows a decent comic-timing (he has a nice line in deadpan reactions, particularly when he meets Mattie’s famed lawyer Daggett for the first time, discovering far from the imposing figure he imagined he’s actually the mousy John Fiedler) and there’s just a little hint of lonely sadness in Rooster as he talks about the family who left him or the homes he’s never known.

Wayne also has a lovely chemistry with Kim Darby, the relationship flourishing in a rather sweet big-brother-“little sister” (as Rooster calls her) way. Although of course it takes time to form: Rooster spends most of the first half of the film trying his best to shrug her off so he can hunt down the gang Tom Chaney runs with (and collect the bounty for them) unencumbered. The two of them form a tenuous alliance with Texas Ranger La Bouef, who is far keener to deliver Chaney to another state for a higher bounty than that offered for the killing of Mattie’s father.

La Bouef is played with try-hard gameliness by singer Glen Campbell, largely hired to commit him to singing the film’s best-selling theme tune. To be honest, he makes for a weak third wheel – but it’s hard not to hold it against Campbell when he charmingly later said he’d “never acted in a movie…and every time I see True Grit I think my record’s still clean!”. Far better is Kim Darby, who gives a spunky tom-boyish charm to the shrewd and persistent Mattie who is far too-smart to either by cheated by short-changing landlords or to be ditched from the trail by Rooster and La Bouef.

It’s Wayne’s film though, and a final act face-off with the villains shows that there were few people better with a gun on screen (his one-handed shotgun twirling reload while riding a horse is surely the envy of Schwarzenegger’s similar move in Terminator 2). The whole enterprise is carefully framed to showcase Wayne and he rises to the occasion. Think of it like that, and it hardly matters that Hathaway offers uninspired work behind the camera and fails to provide either any moments of visual interest or dynamism (or work effectively with the weaker actors).

True Grit is an entertaining, second-tier Wayne film, lifted by his charisma and enjoyment for playing a larger-than-life gravelly cool-old-timer and cemented in history by his reward with that sparkling gold bald man. Compared to other Westerns – both before and at the time – it’s traditional, straight-forward and unchallenging. But it’s fun, has some good jokes and offers decent action. And it’s a reminder that no one did this sort of thing better than the Duke.

See How They Run (2022)

Smug, semi-spoof murder mystery which can’t decide whether it loves or scorns the genre

Director: Tom George

Cast: Sam Rockwell (Inspector Stoppard), Saoirse Ronan (Constable Stalker), Adrien Brody (Leo Köpernick), Ruth Wilson (Petula Spencer), Reece Shearsmith (John Woolf), Harris Dickinson (Richard Attenborough), David Oyelowo (Mervyn Crocker-Harris), Charlie Cooper (Dennis), Shirley Henderson (Agatha Christie), Pippa Bennett-Warner (Ann Saville), Pearl Chandra (Selia Sim), Paul Chahidi (Fellowes), Sian Clifford (Edana Romney), Lucian Msamati (Max Mallowan), Tim Key (Commissioner Harrold Scott), Jacob Fortune-Lloyd (Gio)

It’s the 100^th performance of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap (“how much longer can it run”, the characters ask. If only they knew…) and producers are in talks for a big movie adaptation. At the party, boorish American film director Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody) offends absolutely everyone – and promptly gets murdered. Not only are the cast (including Richard Attenborough – wittily impersonated by Harris Dickinson) suspect, but also the film producers which, contractually, can only go into production when the play closes. Investigating: dishevelled Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and his super enthusiastic sidekick Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan).

See How They Run desperately wants to be a witty commentary on Agatha Christie style locked-room mysteries. It even opens with a voiceover from Brody’s Köpernick, full of scorn for the medium and its cliches before revealing, as per form, that as the least sympathetic character he himself is about to be knocked off. To be fair, there are one or two decent jokes. But the presence of Reece Shearsmith just made me think: Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s anthology dramady Inside No. 9 would have pulled off the same idea, but with far more wit and better understanding of Christie, in half an hour. And certainly with better jokes.

Instead See How They Run feels like it has only the most superficial understanding of Christie, based more on watching a few scenes of Poirot rather than reading the books. Rian Johnson’s Knives Out made a wittier, smarter and more enlightening commentary on Christie in its updating of the form, than this comedy ever manages. It’s never quite clear whether the makers want this to be a genuine Christie-style mystery or an inversion. Stoppard and Stalker go about their investigation in a traditional manner. The suspects all have motives of a sort. There is a definite mystery.

But it’s all lightweight and uninformed. Christie tropes are nudged and then ignored, as if the writers don’t understand them. What better opportunity could you have for Christie’s love for one mysterious character in the story turning out to be an actor in the group in disguise (invariably summarised by Poirot as “the performance of his/her life!”). There actually is a mysterious character here – but it turns out to be another person. Christie tropes around red herrings, secondary crimes, poison – all of them go unexplored.

The film ends with a deliberately counter-intuitive action sequence: but it’s not clear to me why. It’s neither particularly funny, nor does it feel like it has anything to say about the form other than offering an ending we might not expect. There is a nudge on the fourth wall (it’s the ending Köpernick wants) but what point is being made here? Is the action ending endorsing Köpernick’s belief that Christie-style mysteries are formulaic or boring, or is the shoot-out meant to look excessive and ridiculous? Is it implying everything we are watching is Köpernick’s dying fantasy? Is it a gag? I have no idea at all, and that sums up this tonal mess.

It’s a film that wants to have its cake and eat it. It tries to present a genuine murder mystery – and to be fair, when it does this, it does make for a good guessing game – but also wants to take potshots at the genre. It ends up doing neither particularly successfully. And there’s something a bit unlikeable about a film that wants to feed off the audience’s love of a Golden Age detective mystery, but also kinda wants to tell you how the thing you like is actually a bit stupid – and by extension so are you.

Its humour all too often feels a little studenty and obvious – the naming of Rockwell’s character as Stoppard being a case in point (although it does make for one good gag when Pearl Chandra’s charming Shelia Sim denounces another character as “a real hound, inspector”). It eventually feels like a rather smug film, which just goes to show how hard it is to make a Christie-style mystery.

If there is a decent joke in the thing, it’s that it manages to build a film where the plot of The Mousetrap is vital to the outcome, without ever revealing anything about what happens in The Mousetrap. (Presumably, the Christie estate would have had their guts for garters if they did.) Any moment where it looks like we might learn a major event in the play, a character interrupts or someone says “I already know”. These narrative gymnastics are the most inventive thing about it.

The other thing it’s got going for it is a performance of immense charm and comic likeability from Saoirse Ronan, who has rarely been as sweet, bubbly and adorkable as she is here. Ronan’s comic timing is excellent, and Stalker’s mixture of dogged determination and chronic over-enthusiasm provides virtually all the film’s highlights. Rockwell ambles through a (perhaps deliberately) under-written role, but most of the rest of the excellent cast feel under-utilised. Who casts Shearsmith and gives him not a single joke? Sian Clifford to deliver about three lines? David Oyelowo and Ruth Wilson do a lot with very little, but it’s telling that the final act appearance of Lucian Msamati and Paul Chahidi as a master-and-servant double act provides almost as much humour as the rest of the cast put together.

See How They Run passes the time – but that’s really about that. It doesn’t really have anything smart or funny to say about murder mysteries and it never offers anything truly unique or striking to justify itself (other than Ronan’s lovely performance). It’s straining as hard as it possibly can to ape the Coens or (most of all) the quirk of Wes Anderson, but totally lacks the skill and finesse of either. It feels like a film commissioned off the back of Knives Out success: but to be honest if you want to see something that brilliantly riffs off Christie while also being a bloody good mystery, just watch that instead.

Il Postino (1995)

A friendship (of a sort) across the divide in this sentimental, overtly charming romantic comedy drama

Director: Michael Radford

Cast: Massimo Troisi (Mario Ruoppolo), Philippe Noiret (Pablo Neruda), Maria Grazia Cucinotta (Beatrice Russo), Renata Scarpa (The Telegrapher), Linda Moretti (Donna Rosa), Mariano Rigillo (Di Cosimo), Anna Bonaiuto (Matilde Urrutia)

Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret) arrives on an Italian island in 1950, exiled from his home in Chile. He brings celebrity to the small community: but also transforms the life of local Mario Ruoppolo (Massimo Troisi). Mario, a quiet and slightly lost man who doesn’t want to follow in his father’s fishing footsteps, takes a job delivering Neruda’s mail. He becomes fascinated by poetry and idolises Neruda with whom he forms a friendship, after he enlists him to help woo Beatrice (Maria Grazia Cucinotta), daughter of the local café worker. Mario becomes more and more influenced by Neruda’s communism and love of language. How will he cope when Neruda’s exile ends?

A massive box office success – one of the biggest foreign language hits in the USA – Il Postino is a film born from tragedy. Troisi had long wanted to adapt the novel by Antonio Skarmeta. So much so, he delayed urgent heart surgery to make the film. With filming due to start, Troisi was so ill he could work little more than an hour a day. Many of his scenes were done in a single take. Radford re-worked scenes to allow Troisi to sit as much as possible, while a body double did all long shots, medium shots and any close-up where Troisi’s face didn’t need to be seen. Troisi recorded all his dialogue before filming – and tragically died the day after shooting completed.

It’s a moving story: and it’s hard to separate your reaction to it from your reaction to the film. Perhaps influenced by Troisi’s illness, Radford turns Il Postino into a quiet, gentle and mediative piece, crammed with restrained camerawork and thoughtful pacing. There is a gentle, easily digestible warmness to Il Postino, with relatable themes around love, friendship and the power of poetry. But you can’t help but feel subtitles made some feel they were watching something arty, rather than something that is essentially a bit of popular fiction turned into a film.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of positives. Radford perfectly captures the warmth and eye-opening wonder of a man discovering intellectual horizons he never imagined. Mario at first seems not particularly bright – but we discover he is simply a man who has grown up without intellectual stimulation of any sort. No one ever leaves his island and the only ambition anyone has is to become a fisherman. Watching a newsreel of Neruda’s arrival in Italy, the villagers seem as stunned by seeing these magic moving pictures as they do the famous poet’s arrival.

Into this tiny world drops a magic figure: someone who makes Mario discover that the functional words that only ever dropped hesitantly from his mouth, can actually be crafted into gorgeously elaborate sentences, full of power and beauty. Poetry at first just seems like a great way to get girls – Mario is stunned by the amount of mail from ladies Neruda receives – but then becomes an end in itself. Slowly Mario appreciates things around him – the moon, the lapping of waves on the shore, the sound of the wind in the hills – in a way he never even thought about before. Similarly, he begins to question the quiet acquiescence the village shows to all-too-obviously corrupt local politician Di Cassimo.

This largely works due to a quiet, unforced and gentle performance from Troisi. Shyly muttering his lines and rarely raising his head up to look directly at the person he is talking to, Troisi’s performance has an unaffected naturalness to it. He’s quiet, abashed and shy, also childlike, worshipping Neruda with a puppy-dog intensity (that never wilts, even after Neruda leaves the island) and reacts to things around him with an awe-filled wonder.

Opposite him, Noiret soaks himself in artistic confidence as Neruda, a man very aware he’s a huge fish in a small pond. Perhaps because he’s lonely, perhaps because he finds Mario’s childlike openness endearing, he indulges and encourages Mario’s attempts to befriend him. But, despite appearances, I’m not sure Il Postino wants to commit to the fact that this is not a friendship of equals. Neruda is fond of Mario – but he never, truly, sees him as an equal. Mario is, at heart, a distraction Neruda is fond of. He indulges Neruda’s clumsy attempts to win his attention, and there is a slight quiet background air of fatherly condescension in his treatment of him.

It means people overlook the more interesting parts of Il Postino. Because, despite the way it’s presented, this isn’t a story of a friendship over a divide. The final act is in fact more interesting in showing, after Neruda leaves, that a relationship that changed Mario’s life forever was just a brief, fond distraction to Neruda. Neruda remains the most important person in Mario’s life – but he wouldn’t even make the top hundred in Neruda’s life. Neruda makes little effort to keep in touch, gets a secretary to write a functional letter to Mario and takes years to even consider a visit.

The real point of interest here is how Mario flew, Icarus like, close to the sun – but found he could only get so close. He will only ever be a footnote in Neruda’s life, while Neruda is his life. Even when faced with evidence of Neruda’s affectionate disregard, he will still insist on naming his child after him. Similarly, poetry is something he can love but never quite master himself. This is interesting stuff. Il Postino avoids it.

Instead, it’s a film that settles on sentiment. You can’t argue with the skill Radford directs the film, or the quiet power of a late sequence when Mario records the sounds of the island for Neruda. Radford’s unobtrusive direction – partly influenced by working around Troisi’s illness – works to wring the maximum emotion from it. But it’s still a sentimental package: a package skilfully presented to Academy voters by Miramax (Luis Bacalov’s Oscar win for score was surely connected to Weinstein mailing a recording to every member of the Academy) and presents a pleasant fantasy story for the masses, that veers away from its more complex parts to present something far more reassuring and gentle.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022)

Questions of intimacy and sex are explored but not in depth in this theatrical two-hander

Director: Sophie Hyde

Cast: Emma Thompson (Nancy), Daryl McCormack (Leo Grande)

A widowed, retired former RE teacher “Nancy” (Emma Thompson), hires a high-class escort “Leo Grande” (Daryl McCormack) to explore the opportunities in life she feels she has missed: namely, any sexual experience that doesn’t involve functional, passion-free couplings with her deceased husband; the positions and acts she’s heard about that he considered “demeaning” to all involved; and, above all, something called an orgasm. Over multiple meetings, the fragile Nancy and the smooth, charming, but personally guarded Leo tentatively explore physical and emotional barriers.

Hyde’s film could very easily be a theatre piece. Largely taking place in a single location – the hotel room Nancy has hired for their meetings – across four “acts”, it’s a film that relies heavily on the skill and chemistry between the two actors. On that front, it’s very blessed to have such skilled performers who play off each other with such generous and dynamic performances.

They’re helped by a witty script from Katy Brand, crammed with good lines. Nancy is a fusspot, sheltered and deeply self-conscious, who approaches everything from a teacherly angle, including drawing up a sexual “checklist” for their session (“attainable goals” as she puts it). Her middle-class, middle-age hesitancy around sex as something to feel ashamed about casts its mark over everything she says and does (“I don’t like anything going in places where things are meant to come out”) and she can’t shake her own shame and fears that she is exploiting someone (she worries she feels like “Rolf Harris” – a reference that hilariously flies over the head of Leo).

It’s a gift of a role for Emma Thompson, who delights in the witty (if theatrical) dialogue, but also sells speeches full of personal discontentment, bitterness and profound regret. Her early nerves – with a little pinch of guilt – at hiring this sex worker, slowly tip into an outpouring of painful regrets. Nancy is a woman who has lived her life by strict rules – rules that have left her deeply unhappy and desperate for a meaningful intimate relationship with someone to confide in.

Thompson, in a way that I’m not entirely sure the film does, also understands that Nancy is not as nice a person as she might believe she is. Her sadness is often counterpointed with bitterness, rudeness and a tendency to judgementalism. It’s a defensive shield for her deep unhappiness within – but it also perhaps suggests why she is as lonely as she is. This is Thompson at the top of her game, effortlessly funny, heart-rending and frustrating almost from moment to moment.

Her unease, and near-Catholic guilt at sexual intimacy and satisfaction, contrasts neatly with the smoothly professional Leo. It can’t be easy for a young actor to go toe-to-toe with a heavyweight, but McCormack plays Leo with a huge subtlety. Eager to put Nancy at her ease in their first meeting, we see him carefully but skilfully move between several different, possible, personas in search of something she will like. Flashes of personal intimacy and friendship he gives her always leave you guessing how much is real, and how much settling on a persona for his client. Brief moments of thoughtfulness show Leo reflecting on his own past – issues that will come to the surface in later sessions. McCormack skilfully walks the tightrope of playing a man with an invented personality, who adjusts his persona from moment to moment to best please someone else.

The main delights of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande are in the (sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes excruciatingly embarrassing) exchanges between these two, as Nancy constantly puts off what she paid for, partly due to not knowing if she wants it and partly being ashamed to ask for it. At its strongest moments the film uses this to explore our own societal feelings about the entwining between sex, shame and guilt.

After all, sex is something we all have very clear ideas about. And, just like we do with our bodies, often end up judging ourselves harshly against some imagined standard. The film gently argues that perhaps a world of high-class, shame-free, professional sex with someone who knows what they are doing – and can help a client enjoy something that many find quite stressful – might not be a bad thing. It says a lot that Nancy’s first assumptions about Leo tie into a fear that he might be being exploited or vulnerable in some way. It’s also interesting that Leo (at least as he claims – he of course may not be telling the complete truth) enjoys his work, because he sees it as a sort of ultimate people pleasing.

It would be a stronger film if it was able to do more of this thoughtful societal commentary. It never quite manages to really grapple with the issues it raises though, partly because it becomes a little preoccupied with the personal hang-ups of its characters (it would have also helped with Leo didn’t have his own past problems to deal with as well, which rather undermine part of the film’s point that we shouldn’t feel ashamed or that choosing a life like this isn’t always linked to past problems).

It also, by making it very clear that Leo is working at the very expensive end of the sex industry, perhaps takes a slightly rosy view of sex work, glossing over the risks and exploitation experienced by others in the industry with a couple of breezy lines. However, it’s also a very strong two hander, well-written with two excellent performances from McCormack and Thompson, both of whom are superb. It just could have been a little more.

Another Round (2020)

Vinterberg’s film explores our complex relationship with alcohol with a surprising lack of judgement

Director: Thomas Vinterberg

Cast: Mads Mikkelsen (Martin), Thomas Bo Larsen (Tommy), Magnus Millang (Nikolaj), Lars Ranthe (Peter), Maria Bonnevie (Anika), Helene Reingaard Neumann (Amalie), Susse Wold (Principal)

Mankind’s most difficult relationship? Might just be with alcohol. Ever since Noah first toppled over pissed, we’ve struggled to balance that delightful buzz a touch of intoxication gives with the destructive impact way too much has. It’s a relationship explored in Thomas Vinterberg’s curious mix of warning and celebration, Another Round, which (slightly obliquely) looks at the positives and negatives of alcohol consumption.

In a gymnasium school in Copenhagen, history teacher Martin (Mads Mikkeslen) has lost all passion and interest in his students (so much so they try to have him removed) and his marriage is stuck in an increasingly distant rut. After a birthday meal, he and three friends – PE teacher Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), psychology teacher Nikolaj (Magnus Millang) and music teacher Peter (Lars Ranthe) – agree to a pact to combat their ennui. After reading a theory that mankind is born with 0.05% blood alcohol content deficiency (and topping it up makes you more creative and relaxed), they decide to experiment with maintaining a certain level of inebriation. At first it has a positive impact; but as they push the boundaries of the experiment, the negatives swiftly multiply.

Vinterberg’s film is notable for not taking an obvious (or firm) stance on alcohol consumption. It’s easy to imagine an American or British film dwelling on the negatives at the cost of everything, or demonstrating deep regret in the friends for ever starting on this journey in the first place. Another Round doesn’t do this. In fact, it rather bravely points out the positives we can feel from the happiness and relaxation alcohol can give. So much so that, at first, it actually improves people’s lives. After all, if it was always all bad – we wouldn’t drink it would we?

This is most notable in the case of Martin. He might stumble in the staffroom on the way to class, but (after a swig of vodka) his teaching becomes more inspiring, electric and engaging. He rediscovers a passion for working with students, dropping the disengaged drawling of semi-confused facts we see him use earlier (where he doesn’t even seem to be listening to himself, randomly drifting from the Industrial revolution to Churchill) and replacing it with insightful parallels, high-energy tempo and fun activities. Whether it’s psychological or something else, being able to relax clearly has a positive short-term impact on his ability to teach.

It’s matched in the others as well. Peter gets his students singing with an intensity and beauty he couldn’t begin to get them to reach earlier. Tommy, in his work with a primary school football team, brings out the skilled footballer in a shy, bespectacled student (although his uncomfortable blurring of the line between teacher and surrogate parent with this boy hints at Tommy’s lack of control, which the film will explore in more depth). Vinterberg echoes the giddy feeling of elation all four feel by subtle use of a free-moving handheld camera, compared to the more staid rigidity of the earlier stable shots.

Martin also dramatically improves his personal life. He starts to reconnect with his family and rebuild passions with his wife. Sure, there are negatives. Hidden alcohol stashes at the school are discovered. It becomes harder to hide their intoxication in the common room. But it still feels good, right? Problem is, Martin makes the mistake many of us have. If a small amount of this makes me feel this good – why don’t I take a large amount? Surely if I up the blood alcohol content even higher, the positives will be all the greater. Sadly, of course, it doesn’t work like that.

Vinterberg’s film is careful not to use labels like alcoholism. But, in the same way it isn’t afraid to show the world-beating confidence a stiff drink or two can give you, it doesn’t shy away from the impact of over-consumption. Deciding, “as an experiment”, to push their drinking to absurd levels for one night only, to get as intoxicated as possible, the four have a fab night. But the next morning? Peter loses all his clothes diving in the sea. Nikolaj wets the marriage bed in a confused stupor. Martin wakes up, face bleeding, on the pavement having tried (and failed) to use his keys on his neighbour’s house, and is carried home by his humiliated children.

This is as nothing compared to the terrible impact of alcohol on Tommy. While all four of the men no doubt become increasingly dependent, it’s Tommy who tips into full blown alcoholism. Beautifully played by Thomas Bo Larsen, its painful to watch this gruff-but-playful bachelor dip increasingly into confused, stumbling, permanent inebriation, living in a home made of finished bottles and unable to hide from colleagues or students his intoxication.

But, for all that much of the second half of the film focuses on these negatives, it doesn’t offer easy solutions. All four realise things have gone too far – but none of them can forswear (or even seem to consider doing so) alcohol. Martin’s marriage collapses and Nikolaj’s nearly goes the same way. But they still gather at the film’s end for a drink. It’s at this point that it can be a little unclear what Vinterberg’s thoughts are on the demon. But then perhaps that is the point: we all know it’s bad for us anyway, so a film that looks at how we balance that desire with a certain level of responsibility is always, perhaps, going to shy away from either easy answers or definitive statements.

It’s perhaps why the film ends with a surprisingly blissful, up-beat ending of hope for the future rather than despair, as Martin explodes into a riotous improvised dance routine. It’s easy to forget Mikkelsen is a trained dancer, and the fact he provides such a striking, memorable ending to the film is fitting as it’s a triumph for him. At first a shambling, sad-sack figure, Mikkelsen’s Martin finds a casualness and relaxation that seemed beyond him (the film is a physical triumph for Mikkelsen – his drunken move through a common room worthy of Gene Kelly or Buster Keaton). Mikkelsen’s work is extraordinary in its emotional complexity – bursts of pained sorrow, rage, guilt, self-loathing, despair and hope flash across his face and he holds the entire film together.

He’s ably supported by Larsen, Millang and Ranthe – all superb – and Vinterberg’s deceptively casual and unobtrusive direction helps craft a film that offers scenarios but not lectures. While I could have hoped for the film perhaps taking a bit more of a stance one way or the other – or give a more unflinching look at the impact on others of alcohol abuse – as a personal story Another Round is vibrant, honest and (strangely) hopeful, for all the terrible impacts it displays. It lingers with you like a hangover.

Top Gun (1986)

Cruise flies into movie super-stardom in this fun-but-much-worse-than-you-remember flying film

Director: Tony Scott

Cast: Tom Cruise (Lt Pete “Maverick” Mitchell), Kelly McGillis (Charlie Blackwood), Val Kilmer (Lt Tom “Iceman” Kazansky), Anthony Edwards (Lt Nick “Goose” Bradshaw), Tom Skerritt (CDR Mike “Viper” Mitchell), Michael Ironside (LCDR Rick “Jester” Heatherly), John Stockwell (Lt Bill “Cougar” Cortell), Barry Tubb (Lt Leonard ”Wolfman” Wolfe), Rick Rossovich (Lt Ron “Slider” Kerner), Tim Robbins (Lt Sam “Merlin” Wells), James Tolkan (Cdr Tom “Stinger” Jardian), Meg Ryan (Carole Bradshaw)

“I feel the need: the need for speed!” Those words lit up mid-80s cinema screens with one of the biggest hits of the decade. Top Gun is still one of Cruise’s most iconic films, its blasting rock-and-roll soundtrack, beautifully backlit romance and cocksure go-getting self-confidence making it one of the definitive Reaganite 80s films ever made. Its legacy is so all-consuming, it’s always a surprise when you sit down to watch it what a fundamentally average it is.

Its plot, such as it is, can be summarised thus: Tom Cruise cockily flies planes and romances Kelly McGillis until Goose dies. Then he flies planes with the same level of skill but slightly more humility and commits to Kelly McGillis. It all takes place in TOPGUN, the navy’s dog-fight training school for elite pilots. Cruise is Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, super-confident best-of-the-best. Kelly McGillis is the astrophysicist and civilian instructor on the course whose heart melts for Tom’s boyish charms. Anthony Edwards is the doomed Goose (he might as well have a skull and crossbones hanging over him – he’s even got a loving wife and son back home). Val Kilmer is Cruise’s rival pilot, super-professional “Iceman”. The training is fast-paced, macho and culminates in a clash with a (conveniently unnamed) country that definitely isn’t the USSR.

There are three things undeniably great about Top Gun. The songs from Kenny Loggins and Berlin are top notch, full of soft-rock sing-along bombast. Scott shoots the hell out of scenes and the sun-kissed beauty framing the various airplanes and aircraft carriers is superb. With its fetishistic worship of the manly glory of the navy and its equipment, the film had full military backing, a huge boon it exploited for wonderfully executed scenes of dogfights and faster-than-sound planes (Scott even paid $25k to get an aircraft carrier to change course – writing a cheque there and then – so a sunset shot would look better). And of course there is Tom Cruise.

Top Gun is the foundation stone in the Church of Tom Cruise, defining a persona Cruise would effectively riff on for huge chunks of his career. Pete Mitchell is so cocksure he’s even called Maverick. But, as well as being arrogant and over-confident, he’s preternaturally skilled, boyishly enthusiastic, strangely vulnerable, yearns for affection, wins people over with a grin and goes through a crisis of confidence that sands down his negative qualities while never touching his courage, skill and likeability. Cruise cemented his eye-catching charisma and relatability: audiences wanted to be him or be with him. A huge chunk of its massive success is down almost exclusively to what a star Cruise is and how easily he makes this hackneyed stuff work.

The rest is a bizarre mix of half-formed plot ideas, weakly sketched characters and a plot so shallow it almost doesn’t deserve the name. Top Gun is all about a cool guy flying planes accompanied by some excellent songs. There is no depth to its character exploration. There is a dim suggestion Maverick needs to mature (with Goose as the sacrificial lamb to prompt that development) but it’s barely explored. It has no shrewdness in its look at the risk-taking intensity of flying or the type of personalities it might attract. The training is awash with familiar tropes: hotshots, grizzled trainers (two of them in Skerritt and Ironside!) mixing growls with behind-his-back grins at Maverick’s pluck. His rival is the anthesis of Maverick, but (gosh darn it!) he eventually learns to respect him.

The central romance seems thrown in because a film like this needs it – it’s very much An Officer and a Gentlemen in the skies. Maverick’s true emotional love story is with Goose – this surrogate brother/uncle providing Maverick’s only friendship and the vicarious family this Cruise archetype character secretly longs for. But gosh darnit, it’s Hollywood so gotta have a beautiful woman for our hero to manfully seduce. Poor Kelly McGillis looks rather uncomfortable in her ill-shaped and poorly developed character, while her love scenes with Cruise are acted with a slobbering over-intensity that suggests both of them are trying too hard (he constantly kisses her tongue first, which is gross). Perhaps they wanted to really go for it in the hope viewers would overlook the obvious homoerotic tensions of most of the film.

Oh those tensions! Top Gun drips with gleaming, tanned half-naked men squaring up to each other in dressing rooms – and that’s not even mentioning the infamous volleyball sequence (where only Edwards, bless him, wears a t-shirt). Characters forever utter variations on “I’ll nail his ass” lines. Iceman and Maverick take part in a homoerotic-tension fuelled rivalry that culminates in an explosive dog-fight climax and a loving embrace on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

It’s hard to tell how much all this was a joke, and how much Scott, Bruckheimer and Simpson just didn’t notice in the middle of all their glistening, back-lit, fast-paced shooting of military muscle (in every sense) how gay it might look. Maybe they thought people wouldn’t notice either amongst all the military machinery (this must be Michael Bay’s favourite ever film). Top Gun’s aerial footage is super impressive (though it is funny noticing now that famous daredevil Cruise clearly does all his cockpit shots in front of a green screen) even if the whole film feels like an MTV video to promote its knock-out songs.

Top Gun is still fun, even if that’s mostly mocking the nonsense and emptiness it’s built upon. Nothing much really happens, its plot so flimsy it barely stands up against the Mach-9 force of its planes. But it’s got Cruise at his blockbuster best – and when you’ve got that you don’t really need anything else. It’s poorly written, junkfood trash all framed in a fetishistic beauty – but it’s sort of goofy, stupid, empty fun.

Zorba the Greek (1964)

The popular image of Greece gets largely defined, for better and worse, in this flawed, over-long, tonally confused film

Director: Michael Cacoyannis

Cast: Anthony Quinn (Alexis Zorba), Alan Bates (Basil), Irene Papas (The Widow), Lila Kedrova (Madame Hortense), Sotiris Moustakas (Mimithos), Anna Kyriakou (Soul), Eleni Anousaki (Lola), George Voyagjis (Pavlo), Takis Emmanuel (Manolakas), George Foundas (Mavrandoni)

Basil (Alan Bates) a Greek-British writer, returns to Crete to try and make a success of his late father’s lignite mine and rediscover his roots. Joining him is Zorba (Anthony Quinn), a gregarious peasant, who believes in confronting the world’s pain with a defiant joie de vivre. In the Cretan village, their friendship grows and they become involved (with unhappy results) with two women: Basil with the Widow (Irene Papas), lusted after by half the village, and Zorba with ageing French former-courtesan Madame Hortense (Lila Kedrova).

Zorba the Greek was based on a best-seller by Nikos Kazantzakis, directed by Greece’s leading film director Michael Cacoyannis. Matched with Anthony Quinn’s exuberant performance, it pretty much cemented in people’s mind what “being Greek” means. So much so the actual film has been slightly air-brushed in the cultural memory. Think about it and you picture Quinn dancing on luscious Greek beaches. There is a lot of that: but it’s married up with a darker, more critical view of Greek culture that sits awkwardly with the picture-postcard tourist-attracting lens used for Crete.

Nominally it’s a familiar structure: the stuffed-shirt, emotionally reserved, timid and sheltered, is encouraged into a bit of carpe diem by a larger-than-life maverick. As is often the case, he needs t build the courage for romance and work on an impossible dream. Zorba the Greek however inverts this structure: the main lessons Zorba teaches is that you have to meet disaster just as you would meet triumph: with a shrug, a smile and a dance. It’s decently explored – and it lands largely due to Quinn’s barnstorming iconic performance – but also slight message. And Cacoyannis never quite marries it up successfully with the tragic consequences in the film.

Shocking and cruel events happen to the two female characters. The Widow – never named in the film – is loathed and loved by the men of the village, because (how dare she!) she’s not interested in sleeping with them. Played with an imperial distance by Irene Papas, she is condemned as a slut the second she does make a choice about who she welcomes into her bed (Basil, once). Madame Hortense (played with a grandstanding vulnerability by Oscar-winner Lila Kedrova) enters into a one-sided relationship with Zorba. Led to believe (by Basil) Zorba intends marriage, she becomes a joke in the village. Both women’s plot end with shocking, even savage, results.

A braver and more challenging film than Zorba the Greek would have used these events to counter-balance the light comedy and romance of the Greek vistas and Mikis Theodorakis’ brilliantly evocative score, by more clearly commenting on the darkness and prejudice at the heart of the village. In this Cretan backwater, lynching is perfectly legit, women are public property and even our heroes powerlessly accept what happens as the way of things. A smarter film would have pointed out that, in a savage land, Zorba’s ideology is essential or had Basil question his romantic view of Greece once confronted with the barbarism it’s capable of. Neither happens. Instead, the fate of these women is just another of life’s curveballs – the very thing that Zorba has been trying to train Basil to look past. They become learning points on our heroes journey.

Cacoyannis’ rambling script makes a decent fist at trying to capture the mix of Greek life and philosophical reflection that filled Kazantzakis novel. But he fails to bring events into focus or make any real point other than a series of picaresque anecdotes. Tonally the film shifts widely: a boat journey to Crete is played as slapstick, the eventual fate of the Widow chilling horror, the relationship between Zorba and Basil a buddy-movie tinged with the homoerotic. It’s a film that tries to cover everything and ends up not quite exploring any of its successfully.

It’s most interesting note today is homoeroticism. Helped by the casting of Bates, an actor whose screen presence was always sexually fluid (and who is excellent here), it’s hard not to think that Basil and Zorba are most interested in each other. Basil gets jealous, moody and lonely when Zorba leaves for weeks to fetch “supplies” from a local town. Zorba is equally fascinated by the twitchy and shy Basil, coming alive with him in a way completely different to the gruffness he shows to the other characters. Most happy in each other’s companies, there’s a fascinating homoerotic pull here that the film skirts around (not least by making sure both men have female love interests).

Basil is a curious character, strangely undefined and ineffective who listens a lot to Zorba’s messages but seems to learn very little. When the village turns on the Widow he watches like a lost boy. Zorba effectively takes over his home. The one time he tries to live life to the full, it leads to disaster. He remains strangely unchanged by events, which I am sure is not the films intention.

This misbalance is because the film really should be about him and the changes made to his life. It isn’t, because Quinn dominates the screen. A Latin American who most people thought was Italian or Arabic, here becomes the definitive screen Greek. Quinn’s performance here is his signature, grand, performative but also sensitive and strangely noble under the surface, a bon vivant just the right side of ham. He makes Zorba magnetic and hugely engaging and it says a lot that the Greeks effectively claimed him as one of their own. But he does seize control of the film and tips its balance away from its central figure.

Zorba the Greek is a crowd-pleaser, show-casing Greece, that skims on making a more profound impact on how beauty and savagery can live so close together. It doesn’t want to sacrifice the romance too much by staring too hard at the brutality. Tonally, Cacoyannis doesn’t successfully balance the film and its overextended runtime stretches its slight message. But, with its marvellous iconic score and wonderful performances, it’s got its moments.

Widows (2018)

Sexism, racism and corruption get mixed in with crime drama in McQueen’s electric heist film

Director: Steve McQueen

Cast: Viola Davis (Veronica Rawlings), Michelle Rodriguez (Linda), Elizabeth Debicki (Alice), Cynthia Erivo (Belle), Colin Farrell (Jack Mulligan), Brian Tyree Henry (Jamal Manning), Daniel Kaluuya (Jatemme Manning), Jacki Weaver (Agnieska), Carrie Coon (Amanda), Robert Duvall (Tom Mulligan), Liam Neeson (Harry Rawlings), Jon Bernthal (Florek), Garret Dillahunt (Bash), Lukas Haas (David)

A getaway goes wrong and Harry Rawlings (Liam Neeson) and his criminal gang all wind-up dead and their loot burned up. Their last job was cleaning out the election fund of gangster-turned-electoral-candidate Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry). Manning believes he’s owed a debt by Harry’s widow Veronica (Viola Davis). On the hock for millions, Veronica has no choice but to recruit the widows of Harry’s gang to help her pull off the next job Harry planned: cleaning out the campaign fund of Manning’s electoral rival Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell).

Adapted from an 80s British TV mini-series, Widows has been run through Steve McQueen’s creative brain, emerging as a compelling, beautifully shot crime drama mixing social, racial and gender commentary with blistering action. It takes a traditionally masculine genre – the crime caper – and places at its heart a group of women motivated by desperation and survival rather than the lure of lucre.

What’s particularly interesting is that none of these women fit the bill of the sort of person you expect to arrange a daring heist. Viola Davis’ Veronica is a retired teachers’ union rep; Elizabeth Debicki an abuse victim, treated terribly by her husband and selfish mother; Michelle Rodriguez a shop owner desperately trying to give her kids a chance, despite her husband’s reckless gambling. Even the driver they hire, played by Cynthia Erivo, is a hairdresser and babysitter. These women are a world away from the ruthless criminals you’d expect to pull off this kind of operation.

It’s probably why they are routinely underestimated and patronised by men. Veronica is advised clear her debt by selling either everything she owns and disappear. As with the rest of the women, the world expects her to put up and shut up. These are women defined by their husbands and the expectation that their needs are subordinate to others’. Debicki’s Alice is all-but pushed into escort work by her demanding mother, while Rodriguez’s Linda is blamed by her mother-in-law for her husband’s death. But these women have a steely survival instinct that makes them determined and (eventually) ruthless enough to take this job on.

Davis is superb as a determined and morally righteous woman, whose principles are more flexible than she thinks. She efficiently (and increasingly sternly) applies her organisational skills to planning the heist, pushing her crew to adapt her own professionalism. Davis wonderfully underplays Veronica’s grief, not only at the loss of her husband but also the recent death of her son (shot by police officers while reaching to answer his phone behind the wheel of an expensive car – in front of a wall of Obama “Hope” posters, a truly striking visual image).

Her co-stars are equally impressive. Debicki has mastered the mix of vulnerability and strength behind characters like this (how many times has she played suffering, glamourous gangster molls?). Her Alice gains the self-belief to push back against those exploiting her. Rodriguez beautifully balances grief at the loss of her husband with fury at the financial hole he has left her in. Erivo gets the smallest role, but makes Bella dry, loyal and sharp. All four of them use the way men underestimate them – seeing them as widows, wives, weak or sex objects – to plan out their heist.

The reversal of gender expectations crosses over with the social political commentary McQueen wants to explore. This sometimes works a treat: the flashback to the shooting of Veronica’s son is shockingly effective. But the film’s dives into the Chicago political scene and the deep class divisions in the city don’t always have the impact they should. There is a marvellous shot – all in one take, mounted on the car bonnet – as Farrell’s Mulligan travels (in a few minutes) from a photo op in a slum back to his palatial family home, emphasising how closely extreme wealth and poverty sit side-by-side in America.

Both candidates are corrupted in different ways. Jamal Manning – a knife behind a smile from Brian Tyree Henry – is a thug talking the talk to line his pockets. Farrell’s Mulligan has more standards – and you wish for more with this fascinating put-upon son part on-the-take, part genuinely wanting to help. His domineering dad – an imperiously terrifying Robert Duvall, who wants to backseat drive his son in office – demeans his son, shouts racial slurs and bullies everyone around him. Politics: your choice is the latest off-spring of a semi-corrupt dynasty or a literal criminal.

But the film doesn’t quite find the room to explore these issues in quite as much detail as you feel it could: it’s a strong hinterland of inequality, but you want more. McQueen however, does have a gift for unique character details that speak volumes: the women’s operation is shadowed by an electric Daniel Kaluuya, as Manning’s calm yet psychotic brother, who listens to self-education podcasts on Black history and shoots people without a second thought. He, of course, underestimates the women as much as everyone else. That’s as much of a political statement as anything else: none of the men in this film seem to even begin to think that they could be in a world which is truly equal.

The film adds a late act reveal that doesn’t quite work – and the film as a whole is trying to do a little too much – but it’s a confirmation of what a gifted and superb film-maker Steve McQueen is. McQueen shoots even conventional scenes in unique and interesting ways – check out his brilliant use of mirrors throughout – uses editing superbly to set tone and is brilliant at drawing the best from talented actors. Widows is crammed full of terrifically staged scenes and gallops along with pace and excitement. It’s a fine example of a great director turning a genre film into something deeper.