The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Martin Freeman goes on An Unexpected Journey in the first of Peter Jackson’s deeply flawed trilogy

Director: Peter Jackson

Cast: Martin Freeman (Bilbo Baggins), Ian McKellen (Gandalf), Richard Armitage (Thorin Oakensheild), Ken Stott (Balin), Graham McTavish (Dwalin), Aidan Turner (Kili), Dean O’Gorman (Fili), James Nesbitt (Bofur), Cate Blanchett (Galadriel), Hugo Weaving (Elrond), Christopher Lee (Saruman), Ian Holm (Old Bilbo), Elijah Wood (Frodo Baggins), Sylvester McCoy (Radagast), Andy Serkis (Gollum), Manu Bennett (Azog the Defiler), Lee Pace (Thranduil), Benedict Cumberbatch (Necromancer)

The little-loved Hobbit films are finished now. This may be a controversial statement, but looking back at the three films now, An Unexpected Journey is clearly the best of an average bunch, the only one that feels like it has some sort of story arc, where the padding isn’t too overbearing and we get some character moments. Despite all that, it’s (bless) a bit of a mess. A tragic missed opportunity, which are like bloated windy farts that follow through.

So. It’s three films. We all know it shouldn’t be. We all know it’s a slight kids’ book. So let’s take it as read that even this, the best of the bunch, is an over-extended three hour expansion of six chapters (six bloody chapters!) of the original kids’ fable. Never, at any point, does this feel like it needs to be a long film. Where is the depth and passion in this film? It’s a slow, slow, quick, quick, slow paced splat, which takes ages and ages and ages to get going and then runs through as many set-piece action scenes as possible.

Why did Peter Jackson make these films? Honestly, watching it you feel he had a gun to his head. He can’t bring any love or depth of feeling to huge chunks of the film. The action scenes feel put together by a choreographer and designed to be as loud and broad as possible, rather than because they are being put together by a storyteller.

Thirteen dwarves? This is one of the main reasons Jackson was worried about making this film. How could he make these characters distinctive? How could he build plot arcs and storylines for each one? The answer was he couldn’t. So he didn’t even bother. Now I know the Tolkien fans would have hit the roof, but for goodness’ sake would it not have been better for the good of the film to cut the number of dwarves down? So we could get to know them a bit? Because large numbers of these dwarves are indistinguishable from the other. Throughout the course of this film, as a stand-alone viewing experience, only Thorin and Balin stand out in any way as immediately recognisable. They are the only two who you can always identify. The rest? They just all mash into one. They don’t even really have distinctive moments. They are just a mass.

So you watch the overblown, overextended and yawn-worthy action and chase scenes and you just can’t get wrapped up in them. Because all we are doing is watching huge, time-consuming sequences with a mass of characters we can’t tell about, and even when we do, we don’t have any emotional connection to them. The dwarves are all sort of refugees I guess, which gives us some sort of link to them, but it’s the same back story for each one. It’s indistinctive and unclear. If Jackson had gone with his gut and cut some of these out, then the extended running time could have been used to build establishing character moments, to give pay-offs and plot arcs for them. Instead, he kept them all – and never develops any of them.

Those action scenes do go on forever. I know they all come from the book, I get it, but there is no tension in any of them. Dwarves bounce, twirl and fly all over the place. Never at any point do they really feel like they are in danger. A run over the field from some wolves – yawn. The chase sequence through the Goblin kingdom in a mine – double yawn. The second is particularly bad as it brings back strong memories of the LOTR sequence in the Mines of Moria, which had a hundred times the excitement and thrills of this.

In fact that reminiscence is a big problem for a large chunk of the film. The Hobbit is a kids’ book, but The Lord of the Rings is an adult fantasy novel. The attempt to tie these two different tones and genres of novel is a constant hiccup. So we get the dwarves pratting around and bouncing about, in moments that seem childish and cheap. And then we get doom-laden conversations, and dark over-blown musings about the stakes of the world – stakes that don’t tie in, in any way, with the content of the action, adventure story we are seeing in the film. Then there are blatant, clumsy references back to the original – did anyone else groan when Elijah Wood wandered onto the screen? Appearances from Blanchett, Weaving and Lee are all shoe-horned in. At least Ian Holm gets to do some lovely narration. But all these moments simply remind you that you could be watching a better film trilogy than this.

But despite all this, An Unexpected Journey isn’t all bad. Yes it hares about so quickly, with no depth at all, at great over blown length, but it has its moments and it is just about entertaining enough. Jackson can still do some of these moments well – the flashback that opens the film to Smaug’s attack on the mountain is very well done; in fact it has more inspired film-making and tension than nearly anything else that follows. Yes the arrival of the dwarves takes a lot longer to get going than the film needs – but at least it’s pretty charming, and Jackson’s whimsical love of Hobbiton is pretty clear. Shame I don’t think he brought any more invention or sense of charm to much of the rest.

It’s also helped by the fact there are some damn fine performances in there. Martin Freeman is just about perfect casting as Bilbo; he’s charming, vulnerable, slightly-out-of-his depth, brave, very English – he’s great. Ian McKellen practically is Gandalf by now, and he hasn’t lost his understanding of the character’s slightly grubby, grandfatherly charm. Richard Armitage as Thorin is brilliant, mixing a gruff, maverick quality alongside his pride and resolution – and his intense sense of loyalty. Of the rest of the cast, not many get a look-in, being either cameos or underdeveloped, but Ken Stott stands out as the kindly, wise Balin.

The film is also possibly the only one of the three that truly stands alone in some way. It has some form of plot arc behind it in the relationship between Thorin and Bilbo, and the lack of trust Thorin has for Bilbo, his unwillingness to accept him into the group. Similarly, Bilbo has to learn to embrace his role with the dwarves and his place in the company. This is actually a pretty touching and carefully done dynamic, that culminates not only in the film’s most involving (and tellingly low-key) action sequence, but also a tender moment of acceptance from the previously stand-offish Thorin (brilliantly sold by Armitage).

This is a great plot arc. It also has a negative impact on the next two films – because this is the emotional climax in many ways of the trilogy – and it came in the first film of three! With this major emotional plot line between two of our core characters resolved by the end of the first third of the sequence, what is there to do with the rest of it? It’s a major loss for the rest of the trilogy.

But for this stand-alone film it works well. Because it reminds you there is some heart in this film – heart missing from the next two films – because it is founded on an understandable emotional bond. The rest of the company may be indistinguishable, but at least Thorin and Bilbo move us. The best moments in these films are founded on feeling and character investment. Andy Serkis makes a great return as Gollum in an entertaining exchange with Freeman. The clash between Thorin and Azog is the most engrossing in the film because it has a genuine history to it established in the film, that a zillion clashes with the Goblin King, or a pack of wolves or faceless goblins never do.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a decent movie. It has flashes of excellence in it. It’s got some good performances. Peter Jackson is still able to shoot a decent scene, even if you don’t really feel his heart is completely in it. The performances are uniformly good, and some are excellent. But the whole thing feels like an overblown missed opportunity. There was a chance to do something magic here with this Hobbit series. But this wasn’t it. You can’t cast the same trick twice.

Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson triumph in this brilliant adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Cast: Kenneth Branagh (Benedick), Emma Thompson (Beatrice), Denzel Washington (Don Pedro), Michael Keaton (Dogberry), Keanu Reeves (Don John), Richard Briers (Leonato), Robert Sean Leonard (Claudio), Kate Beckinsale (Hero), Gerard Horan (Borachio), Imelda Staunton (Margaret), Brian Blessed (Antonio), Ben Elton (Verges), Jimmy Yuill (Friar Francis), Richard Clifford (Conrade), Phyllida Law (Ursula)

Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing was his second Shakespearean directing gig, but his fourth film – and it’s clear from the first frame what a confident director he has become. Much Ado is one of the best Shakespeare films ever made, and certainly the greatest film version of a Shakespearean comedy, largely because it’s not only charming and hugely enjoyable but also actually funny – a pretty rare feat for any filmed version of a Shakespeare comedy.

From the opening you pretty much know you are in safe hands. Branagh loves the vibrant excitement of cinema, and delights in bringing the meaning out of Shakespeare’s text. Both ideas are central to the opening of the film, with Emma Thompson’s luscious reading of “Sigh No More”, while the camera pans across a bucolically blissful Tuscan setting. This feeds straight into Beatrice’s playful banter with the messenger – and Richard Briers gives the first indication of the film’s attention to small character details with his “don’t go there” look when the messenger tries to correct Beatrice’s teasing defamation of Benedick. From there the film explodes into a triumphant Magnificent Seven style arrival of Pedro’s lords on athletic horseback (backed by Patrick Doyle’s inspiring overture), while Leonato’s household excitedly (in a typical Branagh tracking shot) prepare to greet them, before an overhead crane shot introduces the two groups meeting in a courtyard. Everything you need to know about the sort of film you are getting – and Branagh’s ability to marry the language of cinema with the language of Shakespeare – is right there.

Branagh’s setting of the play in a golden Tuscan villa is perfect for both its playful, relaxed, soldiers-back-from-the-war plot line and the heated romances and jealousies that fuel the plot. Is it any surprise feelings are running high in such a sultry and hot climate? The two worlds – the army men and the people of Leonato’s household – are immediately clear. And the setting communicates the film’s mood – fundamentally bright, sunny, cheerful. Kick back your heels, you are being taken on a high-spirited, exotic holiday.

In this playful setting, Branagh invariably gets the tone just right. Shakespearean comedy is so reliant on live audience reactions, on bouncing off the audience, that creating this on film without that live element is really difficult. Trust me, watch any number of BBC Shakespeare comedies (don’t worry I’ve done it for you) and you will see immediately how hard it is to get that bounce and comedic juice out of these shows. Branagh gets it spot on here – the characters are so likeable, the delivery of the actors so assured, the spirit of the film so light yet perfectly controlled, that the comedy lands nearly every time. Above all, the actors look like they had a whale of a time making the film – and that enjoyment completely communicates to the audience.

The gulling scenes of both Beatrice and Benedick are expertly played and hugely entertaining: Branagh skilfully cuts them to fast-paced essentials, and then gets the best possible comic mileage out of them – from skilled cut-away shots for reactions to wonderful ensemble playing (Briers in particular is superb as a Leonato slightly out of his depth in trickery). It’s easy for the Beatrice gulling scene to fall a little short after the Benedick one – but, largely thanks to Emma Thompson’s excellent performance, that certainly doesn’t happen here.

But Branagh understands Much Ado is not just a comedy: it comes perilously close to being a tragedy. For at least an act of the play, our heroes are at loggerheads, and murder and death are almost the end results. From Claudio’s explosively violent reaction to Hero’s perceived betrayal at the wedding to Leonato’s furious denunciation, horror and danger are ever-present. This then leads us into Beatrice and Benedick’s wonderful post-wedding. Branagh sets this in a small chapel – adding an echo of marriage vows to the understanding the pair reach – and Thompson’s passion, fury and pain are met (for the first time) with quiet, mature understanding from Branagh’s Benedick. Thompson’s order for Benedick to “kill Claudio” carries a fiery conviction that chills. It’s a brilliant scene.

A lot of this works so well because of the brilliance of the acting. Branagh is charming, very funny and mixes this with a growing emotional depth and maturity as Benedick. But the film belongs to Emma Thompson who is quite simply astounding as Beatrice – surely one of the greatest performances of the role you will catch. She is the soul of the movie, at turns playful, frustrated, joyous and consumed with grief and rage. She speaks the lines (needless to say) with absolute clarity and emotion, but even more than that her intelligence dominates the movie. You can’t take your eyes off her.

But this is a very strong cast of actors, the best mix Branagh got between Hollywood stars and his regular players. Denzel Washington is simply perfect as the noble but strangely distant Pedro (his moments of isolation at the close of the film are as touching as they are unsurprising). Richard Briers gives some of his best work in a Branagh film as a Leonato, moved to great emotion and feeling. Leonard and Beckinsale are perhaps not given huge amounts of interpretative depth, but are very lovable. Gerard Horan is very good as a swaggering Borachio.

It’s easy to knock Keanu Reeves but – aside from his untrained voice, which makes him sound duller and flatter than he actually is – his Don John is actually pretty good. As a physically very graceful actor he completely looks the part, and he glowers and fumes with all the intensity you could require – and after all, Shakespeare didn’t give Don John much more to do than that.

No the real problems with the production – and the parts that don’t work – are Dogberry and Verges. Now I can see what Branagh is trying to do here: the malapropisms of Dogberry’s dialogue are rarely, let’s be honest, that funny, and would work even less well on film. But the decision to make Dogberry and Verges a cross between Monty Python and the Three Stooges doesn’t really work. Michael Keaton is giving it his all here to try and get some humour out of this – but his straining for every laugh, combined with gurning over delivery, bizarre accent and physical over-complications, just deaden every single Dogberry scene. These scenes largely flop.

But it doesn’t matter when every other scene in the film works so damn well. And, however much you might drift away during the Dogberry moments, the rest of the film will capture your heart and mind every time. Filmed with a luscious richness and stylish confidence, this is a ravishing and flamboyant film that will never fail to entertain. By the time the final reconciliation has happened, and the house erupts into a joyous celebration party – filmed, with astonishing chutzpah, as a single take, staggering in its complexity, that covers close-up, tracking shot and huge crane shot – while Patrick Doyle’s score gives a swelling version of Sigh No More, you’ll be in love yourself. And if not – well look to yourself.

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

Michael Caine with some of his best ever co-stars in The Muppet Christmas Carol

Director: Brian Henson

Cast: Michael Caine (Ebenezer Scrooge), Kermit (Bill Cratchitt), Miss Piggy (Emily Cratchitt), Gonzo (Charles Dickens), Rizzo the Rat (Himself), Statler and Waldorf (Jacob and Robert Marley), Fozzie Bear (Fozzie Wig), Dr Bunsen Honeydew & Beaker (Charity Collectors), Sam the Eagle (Schoolmaster), Steven Mackintosh (Fred), Meredith Braun (Belle), Robin Weaver (Clara)

There have been many adaptations of Charles Dickens’ beloved novel. Surely few people would disagree – this is the best one. If you don’t love this film I’ll just say it – there is something wrong with you. That’s it. There is no hope for you. Just give up, pack up and go home. Because no Christmas is complete without this film. It’s brilliant.

It’s also perhaps the version that feels the closest to Dickens’ plot – which is remarkable considering 90% of the parts are played by puppets. But what they do so well here is bring the film back to the roots of the novel – it follows the plot pretty much spot on, the setting and design feel brilliantly Dickensian, and it even introduces Dickens as a character. And who better to play the great Victorian showman than the Great Gonzo? Gonzo anchors the film brilliantly, and is both really funny and delivers an awful lot of text from the original book. This actually feels more like a slice of Dickens than nearly any other adaptation you can think of – I’m sure he would have loved it.

That’s why the film works – it has a mix of brilliant muppet humour in it (and there are some really laugh out loud moments) but it’s also a pretty straight adaptation. There are moments where the fourth wall is leaned on, but the content is never mocked. So you get all the fun moments around the edges, but you still get an extremely strong story that has worked for over 100 years. Thank goodness they pulled away from the original idea of parody and played it straight with a smile!

One of the main reasons it works so well is Michael Caine’s superb performance in the lead role. When Caine agreed to do the movie, he was straightforward about his intentions: “I’m going to play this movie like I’m working with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I will never wink, I will never do anything Muppety. I am going to play Scrooge as if it is an utterly dramatic role and there are no puppets around me.” That is totally what he does. Because Caine walks the balance so well, he plays the moments of comedy with great humour, but also the emotional force of Scrooge’s journey.

Caine so totally believes in and respects the world he is working in, that he brings the entire audience with him. If Caine can, with a totally straight-face, treat talking to a small bunny singing carols with as much integrity as he does sharing a scene with Laurence Olivier, all the rest of us can as well. Just think how the film’s mood would have been wrecked if Caine had winked at the camera, or said something like “I told you to only blow the bloody doors off” – the careful balance of the film would have been wrecked in a moment.

I think you can safely say this is one of Caine’s finest films: he’s got fantastic comic timing – his scowly ill-humour for the first third of the film is a delight – but he makes the later scenes genuinely moving. It almost seems like he inspires the muppets around him – Kermit and Miss Piggy’s later scenes dealing with the death of Tiny Tim are genuinely tear inducing (is this the only production of Christmas Carol where Tiny Tim isn’t insufferable?). The Muppets are all brilliant here (if Caine is going to treat them as real actors, I certainly am as well!).

That’s why the film works – it’s really emotionally moving. The muppets inspire a huge residual affection in everyone, and the film mines this brilliantly. So we get pleasure from seeing them – look there’s Fozzie Bear and Sam the Eagle! – and then feel their pain when they are sad. The film gets the balance just right on the muppets’ essential anarchy: at one point Sam the Eagle needs to be reminded that he is playing a Brit, Rizzo frequently forgets he’s playing a role, Animal seems unable to play the gentle music the script plays for at Fozziewig’s party… The film is crammed with small moments like this.

And it all works because it is held within a fine piece of straight storytelling – a faithful adaptation of Dickens, with a brilliant lead performance. It’s also very well made – inventively shot with a real sense of mood and atmosphere and brings memorable scene after memorable scene. There is barely a frame of the film where there isn’t something delightful, entertaining, thought-provoking or all three to spot. It carries emotional weight, it’s laugh-out-loud funny, you’ll fall in love with the characters. Caine sets the tone brilliantly, and raises the game of everyone involved – it’s an impossibly difficult acting task that no one in a muppet film has ever pulled off as well again.

It’s one of the greatest Dickens adaptations, one of the sweetest comedies you’ll see, and one of the greatest Christmas movies ever made. On top of that it’s a brilliant musical, with some fantastic hummable songs (though the cutting of Love Is Gone from the DVD edition – too sad apparently –makes you sigh for Disney’s corporate soul). No Christmas would be complete without it. A must-watch classic.

My Cousin Rachel (2017)

Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin in a dance of romance and suspicion in My Cousin Rachel

Director: Roger Michell

Cast: Rachel Weisz (Rachel Ashley), Sam Claflin (Philip Ashley), Iain Glen (Nick Kendall), Holliday Grainger (Louise Kendall), Simon Russell Beale (Court), Pierfrancesca Favino (Enrico Rainaldi), Andrew Havill (Parson Pascoe), Andrew Knott (Joshua)

Did she? Didn’t she? That’s the key phrase this deliberately ambiguous film returns to again and again. Is Cousin Rachel a serial schemer, seductress and possible murderer? Or is she just – well I guess just really unlucky? It’s a difficult line to tread –ambiguity is extremely challenging to bring to film, as it’s a medium that’s pretty decisive in what it shows us first-hand. But My Cousin Rachel pulls this off with a creepy aplomb.

At some point in the 1830s, Philip Ashley (Sam Claflin) receives a letter from his cousin and guardian Ambrose, who has recently passed away in Italy. The letter obliquely accuses Ambrose’s wife, his cousin Rachel (Rachel Weisz), whom Philip has never met, of poisoning Ambrose. As Ambrose died before he could prepare a new will, Philip inherits his estate – but still harbours a rage against Rachel, suspecting her of murder. However, when Rachel comes to stay with him, Philip finds himself increasingly drawn towards, and besotted with, her.

Roger Michell gracefully directs and writes this intriguing little mood piece, a fine chamber-piece thriller. With an unsettlingly lyrical score and shot with a beautiful eye for the Cornish countryside, My Cousin Rachel not only grips, but rings true with anyone who has either (a) fallen blindly in love, (b) suffered from romantic obsession or (c) been paralysed with jealousy. Which is probably just about everyone.

The film relies for its success largely on Rachel Weisz’s exceptionally intelligent and thoughtful performance as Rachel. She looks perfect for the role – she’s both the sort of woman men would fall wildly in love with, and old enough to settle into an unsettling, semi-incestuous flirtation with Philip. Her performance works because Weisz plays the part with exceptional skill, never tipping the wink to the audience, but skilfully modulating and adjusting her performance with every scene so that you remain as uncertain about her actions and motives as anyone else.

Apparently Weisz made her own mind up on Rachel’s guilt and innocence, but never told Michell or Claflin. Intriguing to think that while they shot scenes of domesticity or passion, that only one of those involved really knows what’s happening – a mood that totally carries across to the viewer. Weisz plays the part with complete strength of conviction and straightness – every scene is played as if the feelings in it were completely true and bereft of manipulation. She makes it unreadable, while having a face overflowing with emotion and feeling. Does she understand Philips feelings early and manipulate him? Or does she genuinely not expect his romantic intentions?

Michell skilfully shows how Rachel wins over people with ease. Even the dogs immediately gravitate towards her. Parson Parscoe and his family flock around her. Philip’s servants smarten themselves up and make every effort to make a good impression on her. His godfather Nick seems to oscillate continually in his judgement of her, but even he seems powerless in her presence. The camera carefully hovers and focuses in on Rachel, with many shots focusing on her face alone – seducing us as much as the rest of the characters. We almost never see her except in scenes with Philip – so we have the same information as he does for making our minds up.

Sam Claflin is equally key to the film as Philip. In many ways Philip is quite the whiny teenager – you could easily dismiss him as a romantic young idiot, an obsessive would-be Romeo, who makes a series of terrible decisions through listening to his penis rather than his head. But despite that –/ perhaps because his errors and mistakes seem so universal – it’s easy to sympathise with him. Rather than want to slap him anger, you want to do so in frustration – “don’t do that, you idiot!” Michell and Claflin play his increasing disintegration brilliantly. Is it poison? Or is it his increasing jealousy and obsession unhinging him? Who hasn’t been involved in an unequal romantic obsession?

It’s not a perfect film. Philip’s obsession with Rachel is alarmingly sudden – perhaps too sudden. Towards the end, Michell becomes slightly too enamoured with mystery – a final, lingering shot introduces an element of uncertainty about a character we have never had cause to suspect, which feels like a little too much. At times the lingering camera seems to be trying to suggest more in the performance than Weisz seems willing to give away.

But these are quibbles. The film is well-directed and filmed, and terrifically acted – Glen and Grainger are very good in key supporting roles – but it’s a triumph for Rachel Weisz. Weisz seems like an actor it’s easy to overlook, maybe because she has never quite got the star vehicles her talent matches – but this film is a clear reminder that, at her best, she is an extremely gifted performer.

Carlito's Way (1993)

Sean Penn and Al Pacino struggle with the impact of a life of crime in Carlito’s Way

Director: Brian de Palma

Cast: Al Pacino (Carlito Brigante), Sean Penn (David Kleinfeld), Penelope Ann Miller (Gail), John Leguizamo (Benny Blanco), Luiz Guzmán (Pachanga), Jorge Porcel (Saso), James Rebhorn (Bill Norwalk), Joseph Siravo (Vincent Taglialucci), Frank Minucci (“Tony T” Taglialucci), Adrian Pasdar (Frank Taglialucci), Viggo Mortensen (Lalin)

Every so often from the 1990s onwards, Al Pacino actually bothered to act rather than rage in an orgy of self-parody. It’s the films where he does really embrace the challenge, like Carlito’s Way, that reminds you what a damn fine actor he is. Carlito’s Way may also be a reminder of what an overtly flashy director Brian de Palma is, but it’s a fine American gangster thriller.

In 1975, Carlito Brigante (Al Pacino) is released from prison after five years on a legal technicality, exposed by his friend and lawyer Dave Kleinfeld (Sean Penn). Carlito makes a speech at his hearing, claiming he is a reformed man who wants leave his criminal past behind him – and to the shock of Kleinfeld and his colleagues in the underworld, he’s telling the truth. Carlito attempts to go straight, and to rebuild a relationship with Gail (Penelope Ann Miller), the young woman he left behind. Unfortunately, Kleinfeld is not only becoming increasingly unpredictable due to his cocaine addiction, but he is starting to blur the lines between criminal lawyer and plain criminal. His actions continually threaten to drag Carlito back into the crime industry.

Carlito’s Way is a fine semi-morality tale, a modern tragedy of a man who, every time he thinks he’s out, “they pull me back in”. And of course we know that he’s on a hiding to nothing, as the film opens with Pacino gunned down by an unknown assailant and recounting most of the film’s plot (presumably) from beyond the grave. His attempts are doomed largely because, in order to go straight quick and easy, he has to raise money the only way he knows how – working in the very same flashy nightclubs and among the career criminals that he should absolutely be avoiding.

Carlito narrates the film with a weary reluctance, carefully recounting the mistakes he made and why. It’s a device that largely manages to avoid telling us the obvious, and actually gets us closer to, and like, Carlito. It also helps that Pacino’s voice itself has a gruff poetry to it, and he adds a Shakespearean grandeur to this familiar old-school tale of the crook who wants out.

Pacino’s intensity works fantastically for the part. He largely keeps the Pacino fireworks for the moments where they carry the most impact. He and de Palma carefully sketch out a portrait of Carlito as a world-weary man, who (try as he might) can’t leave behind the code and rules that have governed his life as a criminal. He can’t escape the confines of thinking like a criminal. Most terribly, his old-school sense of honour (few actors convey dishevelled personal morality better than Pacino) is what will doom him – he can’t break the code of the streets. It’s a terrific, empathetic performance from Pacino.

Pacino also develops a sweet, loving relationship between him and Penelope Ann Miller’s Gail. In the way of these films, Gail is a stripper – she alternates between sweetly loving and overtly sexually flirtatious as the plot demands – but Miller makes her feel like a real person. She and Pacino have great chemistry (which, rumour has it, also carried over into real life) and de Palma shoots their scenes with an old-school romanticism and a steady camera, which contrasts with the disjointed sweep and Dutch angles he uses elsewhere.

Sometimes these flashy angles get on my nerves. de Palma often feels like he’s trying too hard, rather than stretching his muscles. Saying that, he’s a master of the set-piece. The film has two action set-pieces and both simmer with tension and inventiveness. One involves a bungled drugs deal in a dingy bar. The other a thrilling chase sequence in Grand Central Station, a deliciously shot mixture of great editing and daring extended single shots. Sequences like this bring memories, inevitably, of Scarface and it’s tempting to see Carlito’s Way as a spiritual sequel – as if Tony Montana had been arrested and changed his ways.

Perhaps a testament to how good Carlito’s Way is (or rather how much I enjoy it) is that I even think Sean Penn is terrific in it. Penn is one of those actors I find tryingly self-important (both professionally and personally). But his weaselly lawyer, a hair-trigger addict, nowhere near as smart and adept as he thinks he is, is marvellous. Penn’s performance is a whipper-cracker mix of slimy self-confidence and arrogant blindness, with moments of curiously underplayed vulnerability that makes it make sense why Carlito remains so loyal to him. It’s one of Penn’s best, most controlled performances, a virtuoso performance of whining weakness.

Carlito’s Way is part pulp gangster thriller, part character study humanely outlining the impossible difficulty of changing our stars. Carlito may be ready to jack in the criminal world – but he continues to live the life of the criminal while persuading himself he isn’t. The whole film has a tragic inevitability about it – and would do even without the framing device. Carlito wants out – but he wants to rush to get the investment he needs, and walking the shadow line is the only thing he knows how to do. It’s a great modern tragedy.

The Westerner (1940)

Entertaining but unspectacular Western fun as odd-couple friends turn rivals

Director: William Wyler

Cast: Gary Cooper (Cole Harden), Walter Brennan (Judge Roy Bean), Doris Davenport (Jane Ellen Matthews), Fred Stone (Caliphet Mathews), Forrest Tucker (Wade Harper), Paul Hurst (Chickenfoot), Chill Wills (Southeast), Lilian Bond (Lillie Langtry), Dana Andrews (Hod Johnson)

In 1882, Cole Harden (Gary Cooper) arrives in the town of Vinegaroon in Texas. The town is ruled by “Judge” Roy Bean (Walter Brennan), a corrupt, self-proclaimed justice of the land, who collects unfair fines and hands out “suspended sentences” (i.e. hangings). Nearly hanged, Harden escapes by peddling a story of his (fake) friendship with Lillie Langtry, the obsessive focus of Bean’s love. Over time the two men find themselves drawn to each other, forming a friendship – which is challenged by Bean’s favouring the violent cattle ranchers over the homesteaders.

The Westerner is a well-constructed, decent old-style Western that doesn’t do anything particularly radical – as if those making it needed a bit of downtime between more demanding projects, so put together something quite enjoyable to fill their time. It’s nominally a film about the clash between cowboys and homesteaders, but this plotline actually gets very little play – and is pretty unclear.

What it really is, is a sort of romance between Harden and Bean. They are two people surprisingly drawn together, who have a similar outlook on the world, and share a very natural and immediate bond. They have very real chemistry. In fact their chemistry is so strong there is barely room for anyone else to get a look in.

So the film is a sort of bromance tragedy, because of course it’s clear that they will end up on opposite sides. Because Bean has principles of control which Harden cannot allow to stand. Because the same instincts that lead Bean to champion the cowboys, are the same ones that lead Harden to champion the homesteaders. Both men think that they are basically in the right. The main difference between them is probably that, if push comes to shove, Bean would rather win than be right, while Harden is more concerned with meeting his moral standards than anything else.

Wyler brings all this together with professional crispness, shooting the action and more chamber-piece moments with skill. He draws a real playfulness from Brennan and Cooper – could many other directors have thought about including a scene where Cooper wakes up slightly confused in a bed with Brennan’s arm around him after a night of drinking? Confrontations throughout the film have a playful edge to them, even when guns are on the table. Even the final gun fight between the two has a reluctant edge to it, as if this was a game with a few more consequences than normal.

The bond between Bean and Harden is so strong, and so central to the film, that the relationship between Harden and Jane Ellen Mathews never quite clicks into gear. There is a charming scene where Cooper (with an honest flirtatiousness) cuts a lock of Jane Ellen’s hair – but the film isn’t really interested in this relationship. It feels like it exists for plot and scripting reasons – that the writers felt a romantic plot was needed, and wanted to give Harden a very clear personal motivation above and beyond his sense of justice. Doris Davenport is fine as Jane Ellen, but it’s not a performance you really remember.

Gary Cooper is rather good as Cole Harden, despite his reluctance to do the film. Cooper identified that Brennan had the best role and the best lines, and felt that he would actually be playing the support rather than the lead. Contractual obligation got him into the film. And it’s a good thing, as Cooper is actually very good. He has a light comedic touch which you don’t often associate with him, which he matches with his upright honesty and unflinching decency. But there is a playful grin behind his eyes throughout, and you get a real sense of his conflicting loyalties.

But Cooper was right – Judge Roy Bean is the role in this film, and Walter Brennan (who won his third supporting actor Oscar in five years for this) is quite simply terrific. His Bean is a wily, slightly crooked, maverick bully with a warped sense of personal justice – but he’s also a charming, rather sweet old man with a tough streak. The script gives a lot of focus to Bean’s obsessive love for the actress Lillie Langtry, which not only humanises him, but turns someone who we first see carrying out a ruthless judicial murder into some sort of teenage, love-struck rogue. That’s the genius here – Bean could be awful, but actually we (like Harden) end up loving him. Brennan’s effortlessly charismatic performance is central here – he is terrific in the role.

Take away these performances though and you probably only have flashes here and there of class alongside. Scenes are well constructed, and the entire film is very well filmed by the great Gregg Toland, but it’s very much a solid piece of professional work rather than a great classic. Brennan is brilliant and Cooper impressive, but not much more of the rest of the film really settles into the memory.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road – a crazy car chase film

Director: George Miller

Cast: Tom Hardy (Max Rockatansky), Charlize Theron (Imperator Furiosa), Nicholas Hoult (Nux), Hugh Keays-Byrne (Immortan Joe), Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (The Splendid Angharad), Nathan Jones (Rictus Erectus), Riley Keough (Capable), Zoë Kravitz (Toast the Knowing), Abbey Lee (The Dag), Courtney Eaton (Cheedo the Fragile), Josh Helman (Slit)

Sometimes films seem designed to give you a visceral thrill, to throw you into an experience and see whether you sink or swim. To pull off that sort of hard-edged momentum, you need a film-maker skilful enough to create an addictive energy that never slackens and never gives you a second to question the film while it’s going on. Mad Max: Fury Road has such a director in George Miller, and its demented, high-octane excess, married with a film-making style that felt modern, vibrant and grounded in reality, surprisingly made it one of the most acclaimed films of 2015.

In a post-apocalyptic future Australia, the world is a ruined desert and basic requirements like water, greenery and fuel are more valuable than anything. In a rocky outcrop, cult-leader Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) rules one of the few populations by controlling access to the water. “Road warrior” Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) is captured by Immortan Joe’s warriors and put to work as a “blood bag” to transfuse into Immortan Joe’s warriors. However, this coincides with a planned escape by Immortan Joe’s wives (the few remaining women capable of conceiving children). Led by road warrior Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), the women flee to find a mysterious paradise in the wilderness. Cue an almighty chase and running battle between Furiosa’s road carrier and Immortan Joe’s forces, desperate to reclaim the wives.

Mad Max: Fury Road is a bizarre, extreme, surreal thrill ride, a high-octane road chase, crammed with action, thrills and dynamism. It’s directed with extraordinary vibrancy by George Miller, who makes it fresh and scintillating. Miller crams the action and design with an explosion of style. Everything is amped up to 11, from the look to the characterisations and motivations. But what makes this such a well-directed film is that Miller shoots much of it with careful, professional clarity: so many other films would be cut with a frantic craziness, but this has a polished traditionalism to it. Basically Miller knows the actual content of the story is “insane” enough that he doesn’t need to gild the lily with bizarre, swooping camera angles or choppy editing.

That’s partly why this film has had such a strong positive reaction. While being insanely OTT, it’s actually quite an old-fashioned piece of film-making, and it looks like a lot of it was shot for real on location, using real practical stunts. This may or may not be the case, but it certainly looks like this. And in an era where so many action films are about superheroes, and crammed with special effects, to have a world where things feel grimy and real, where the objects we are watching feel like they exist, is like a breath of fresh air. The design throughout the film accentuates this sense of reality. It makes things feel like they have depth and force. It immediately adds stakes to the action.

That action takes place in a unique looking world. The visuals in this film are crazy. The design of Immortan Joe’s half-nude soldiers, with their silver paint aerosol and petrol smeared faces, is terrifyingly cultish. The look of the many different vehicles is immediately striking, with each being clearly of the same world, but each distinctive in look, like some Wacky Races. The steampunkish mix of cobbled-together remains of technology to create the cars and trucks is brilliantly done. It’s a film that looks like nothing else, and shot with radiant streaks of yellows and blues, mixed with scenes shot in almost painterly black and white. It’s an explosion of style, but not straining too hard to force itself upon you like so many films do.

The film also has a simple structure and storyline, that allows it to focus on the action. It’s slick, steamlined and very focused. The villains are clear, and their motivations easy to understand. They are presented with a certain depth, but their essential villainy is easy to have a gut instinct against. This also helps us bond with our heroes – despite the fact that most of the wives have only the most briefly sketched of characters. But we totally understand their position, fear and desire for freedom. Just as the film is a primal explosion of “fight or flight”, so are the feelings our heroes carry. Everyone can relate to them.

It’s also great that this is an action film where the women largely drive (literally!) much of the action. The film may have the Mad Max name on it, but the true lead of the film is Furiosa. It’s her actions that drive the film, it’s her conflicts that are at its heart, the film is her journey and Max is largely along for the ride (again literally!). Charlize Theron is very impressive in the lead, a strong warrior woman, but also someone with a buried poetic soul and a clear emotional arc. Tom Hardy delivers as the grizzled Max, but this is very much Theron’s film.

Mad Max: Fury Road is an exciting and engrossing film. But it’s made with such professional inspiration on the visuals that it invites people to read into it a lot more depth than I think is actually there. It’s got such old-fashioned control and brilliance to it, while being so explosive and vibrant, that it’s tempting to read into it a thematic complexity. Let’s be honest, this is a chase movie. It’s a hell of a chase movie, but it’s a chase movie.

It may be set in a world of post-apocalyptic totalitarianism, but it’s not trying to tell us anything hugely original about what such a world may be like. It creates such a world with huge inventiveness, but it’s not an enlightening film. Similarly, this is a film that places women at the centre of its action, but I’m not sure you could call it a film that has much to say about feminism. Most of the women in this film are still defined primarily by their breeding abilities. Furiosa may be the leader, but most of the rest of the women are under her protection. The film does something different with gender, but it also does a lot of quite traditional things.

It’s really tempting to see great symbolism in such a dynamic and striking piece of film-making. But thematically there isn’t much there. Miller directs a film that is brilliant too experience, so brilliant you expect there to be more at its heart. In truth there isn’t really – it’s largely what it appears to be on the tin. There’s nothing wrong with that though. You just need to know what you are going to get. This is not some great game changer of a motion picture, that will reinvent and reposition the genre. It is a skilfully made and compelling chase movie, where a group of people run to a point, turn around and head back, being chased all the way. It’s shot with a near poetic, old-school brilliance – but it’s still just a chase movie. Accept it as that – a high-octane action thriller – and you will be swept away. Look to it for the thematic depth some have claimed it carries and you will be disappointed.

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

Dirk Bogarde, Sean Connery, Ryan O’Neal and Gene Hackman are among the Generals aiming to go A Bridge Too Far

Director: Richard Attenborough

Cast: Dirk Bogarde (Lt-Gen Frederick “Boy” Browning), James Caan (Staff Sgt Eddie Dohun), Michael Caine (Lt-Col J.O.E. Vandeleur), Sean Connery (Maj Gen Roy Urguhart), Edward Fox (Lt Gen Brian Horrocks), Elliot Gould (Col Robert Stout), Gene Hackman (Maj Gen Stanislaw Sosabowski), Anthony Hopkins (Lt Col John Frost), Hardy Krüger (SS Maj Gen Karl Ludwig), Laurence Olivier (Dr. Jan Spaander), Ryan O’Neal (Brig Gen James Gavin), Robert Redford (Major Julian Cook), Maximilian Schell (SS Gen Wilhelm Bittrich), Liv Ullman (Kate ter Horst), Michael Byrne (Lt Col Giles Vandeleur), Denholm Elliott (RAF Officer), Jeremy Kemp (Briefing Officer), Wolfgang Preiss (Feldmarchall Gerd von Rundstedt), Stephen Moore (Maj Robert Steele)

You’ve got to love a good war film. In fact, there are few things more cinematic than the old-school, star laden Hollywood war film. A Bridge Too Far is for me one of the finest examples of this genre, and it’s a film I come back to time and time again. Is it perfect? No of course it isn’t – in fact I probably love this film more than some of the people actually in it do. But it’s a damn fine piece of big-screen, big-budget film-making, and it’s got a cast of stars. And more than perhaps any other film of this genre, it’s a film about how overwhelmingly awful and gut-wrenching war is. This is a film about a defeat – and not the sort of triumphant defeat that Dunkirk feels like. It’s just a gut-punch. The Allies threw the dice big time, and they lost.

The Battle of Arnhem was one of those “end the war by Christmas” plans. The brainchild of British war-hero Field Marshall Montgomery (noticeably absent from the film), Operation Market Garden was a lightning strike into the heart of the Ruhr to capture Germany’s industrial capability. This involved a series of paratrooper drops into towns in the Netherlands, culminating in Arnhem, to cross the Rhine. While the paratroopers seized key bridges, British Tank Division XXX Corp would power through, cross the bridges and into Germany. It was bold, daring and radical. It was a disaster. Arnhem, far from being undefended, was being used as a rest place for a Waffen-SS Panzer division. The British paratroopers found themselves not seizing a lightly defended bridge, but fighting a tank division with machine guns and limited supplies. Meanwhile XXX Corp’s progress became bogged down in traffic jams and higher than expected German resistance.

It’s quite something to make a war film about possibly the biggest military disaster on the Western Front during the Second World War. The entire plan is a misconceived tactical blunder, and the film never shies away from this, demonstrating time and again the numerous errors that led to it: from Generals ignoring reconnaissance that suggests this won’t be a cake walk, to paratroopers failing to seize bridges quickly, to tanks crawling down crowded roads, fighting every step of the way. Alongside all this, the film never loses track of the horrifying impact of war on both soldiers and civilians caught in the crossfire. It’s a huge budget, all-action, anti-war film.

Richard Attenborough is the perfect marshal for this film. He has the experience and understanding of scope to handle the action scenes. At the time, this film was possibly the most expensive film ever made. Not only that, it was independently funded – producer Joseph E. Levine thought the film was so important he pumped millions of pounds of his own money into it. The attention to detail is extraordinary – the film consulted nearly every single surviving commander from the battle on the script – and all the stops were pulled out creating the military features of the film.

This is of course particularly striking now as we know everything in the film is real – no special effects in those days. If you see it in the film, then you know that it was really there. In the sequence showing the planes taking off to deliver the paratroopers to their destinations, there were so many planes in the air that Attenborough could literally claim to command the world’s seventh largest air force. Every military blow of the battle is carefully reconstructed. The tactics are carefully explained and followed. Attenborough can shoot compelling action.

But what makes the film so good (for me anyway) is the way the heart-breaking horror of war never gets lost. In all this action, we are always shown the cost. Attenborough will frequently cut back to the after-effects – several times we hear wounded soldiers whimpering on smoke-filled, body-littered battlefields. Many acts of courage (on both sides) by individual soldiers result only in pointless, gut-wrenching deaths. Arnhem isn’t just damaged by the battle, it’s flattened. The impact on the civilian population is terrible – in a powerful sequence, we see characters we were introduced to earlier mercilessly caught in the crossfire of the German tanks. We return continually to locations increasingly shredded by weapons fire. More and more soldiers are wounded – some horrifically. Near the end, the remaining British paratroopers, encircled and surrendering, sing a deeply moving quiet rendition of Abide With Me. No one could come out of this wanting to go to war.

Attenborough’s humanity is key to the film’s success. It helps as well that he is a brilliant actor’s director. Want to dispel any doubt on the horrors of Arnhem –then train the camera on the Laurence Olivier’s tear-stained face as he drives through the destroyed streets. Want to understand the sacrifices and the courage? Well just let Anthony Hopkins – simply excellent as the commander of the only forces to reach the bridge at Arnhem – with calm, restrained Britishness request support and supplies late in the film as his men are butchered around him. It’s a film full of brilliant moments of acting like that, where Attenborough points the camera at them and lets them act.

The sequences around Arnhem and the British paratroopers there are the heart of the film. Sean Connery is terrific as Major General Roy Urquhart, commander of the British paratroopers. His growing frustration as events spiral far out of his control is a great contrast with his initial professional confidence. Gene Hackman, as commander of the Polish forces (slightly odd casting but good once you tune up to it), gets the role of the “one man talking sense” who can smell disaster early on, but works harder than anyone to get the plan to work. A number of the regular soldiers in Arnhem are faces the film returns to again and again – giving us people to relate to as their numbers are increasingly decimated by the savage, desperate combat. John Addison’s score also helps a huge amount with building the emotion in these scenes.

The Arnhem sequences are so good that the other sequences around the American paratroopers feel like they come from a slightly different movie. It doesn’t help that the likes of Elliot Gould are playing slightly clichéd “Brooklyn Yankee” types, chomping cigars and ribbing the stiff-upper-lip Brits. Ryan O’Neal as General Gavin is slightly dull. The XXX Corp material is a little dry (essentially driving up a road or waiting), although Edward Fox is superb (and BAFTA-winning) as their charismatic commander Lt Gen Brian Horrocks. Attenborough puts together at least one terrific set-piece tank battle on the road – but it’s not quite enough.

The two biggest American stars are also given the feel-good, up-beat material. James Caan gets the best part in what is effectively a stand-alone story of a Staff Sergeant going to impossible lengths to save the life of his Captain (Caan had his choice of part and chose well). Robert Redford is a little too starry (bizarrely in a film full of stars!) as a Major tasked to seize the vital bridge at Nijmagen via a daylight river-crossing. This sequence feels like it’s been put in the film to (a) give us something to cheer and (b) to allow an American victory for the box office. Of course, we need the biggest star in the world at the time to play the most straight-forward heroic part!

The film does have a tendency to shuffle its characters into “good” and “bad”. So after Redford seizes the bridge, the character sent to tell him that XXX Corp won’t be rushing across to Arnhem after all isn’t Caine’s Vandeleur, but a nameless Colonel played by Polanski’s villainous Ross from Macbeth himself, John Stride. The most sympathetic generals and commanders are all (coincidentally) the people who served as military advisors on the film.

On the other hand, the film ends up laying most of the “blame” on Dirk Bogarde’s Lt Gen Browning. Browning’s widow, Daphne du Maurier, threatened to sue the film-makers for the portrayal of Browning here (she got an apology). Browning is portrayed as the ultimate “non-boat rocker” – over-confident and arrogant, he disregards intelligence suggesting the Arnhem plan is dangerous, seems shocked and clueless once the scale of the disaster is revealed, and by the end of the film seems to be most interested in positioning himself as always opposed to the plan in the first place. Bogarde (the only actor in the film who actually served in Market Garden) was similarly angry when he saw the film – and he has a point. It’s grossly unfair.

It’s a problem with this film and it does annoy me. The parts not set in Arnhem are not as memorable or compelling as the rest. But huge chunks of the film are brilliant, and never fail to move or (sometimes) excite me. Its anti-war stance is striking. The acting from the cast is very good across the board – say what you like, cast every part with a star and you never get confused about who is who. Attenborough also draws great performances from the non-stars – Stephen Moore is a particular stand-out as a signals man unwilling to voice his doubts about the equipment (and who pays a heavy price).

I can watch A Bridge Too Far at any time. I always love it. It’s a film of great moments and performances. It carries real emotional weight. Attenborough is a very good director of actors, but also a skilled commander of scale. It’s a film that gets emotion in there. It’s a film that isn’t afraid to present a military disaster. It doesn’t demonise the Germans. Sure it plays goodies and baddies with the Allies, and parts of it to drag on a bit too much or deal with cliché. But at its best is the core of a great film. I love it. It’s a favourite. And always will be.

Rob Roy (1995)

Tim Roth and John Hurt are the villainous aristocrats taking advantage of Liam Neeson’s honour in Rob Roy

Director: Michael Caton-Jones

Cast: Liam Neeson (Rob Roy MacGregor), Jessica Lange (Mary MacGregor), John Hurt (Marquess of Montrose), Tim Roth (Archibald Cunningham), Eric Stoltz (Alan MacDonald), Andrew Kier (Duke of Argyll), Brian Cox (Killearn), Brian McCardie (Alasdair MacGregor), Gilbert Martin (Guthrie), Ewan Stewart (Coll), Jason Flemyng (Gregor), David Hayman (Tam Sibbalt), Shirley Henderson (Morag)

In the mid-1990s there was one of those bizarre Hollywood coincidences that saw two similarly filmed Scottish-based dramas head into production at the same time: Braveheart and Rob Roy. Braveheart stole the headlines, and the Oscars, and turned William Wallace from a footnote in history into an icon of Scottish independence. However, it’s arguable that the over-looked Rob Roy is the better, richer, more involving film.

In 1713, Rob Roy MacGregor (Liam Neeson) is the Chief of the Clan MacGregor, in a loving marriage to Mary (Jessica Lange), and supports his clan through protecting the cattle of the gentry. Knowing that this is not enough to help their poverty, Rob borrows £1,000 from the Marquess of Montrose (John Hurt) to start a cattle trading business. However, on collecting the money, his friend Alan MacDonald (Eric Stoltz) is murdered by Archibald Cunningham (Tim Roth), a foppish playboy and ruthless fencer, who is staying with Montrose and wants the money to clear his debts. Montrose demands Rob falsely testifies that his rival the Duke of Argyll (Andrew Keir) is a Jacobite in return for forgetting the debt – when he refuses, he is named an outlaw and a rebel.

Rob Roy works so damn well because it is thrillingly told, well-scripted, shot with a romantic sweep in some terrific Scottish locations and uniformly excellently acted. It’s perfectly constructed as a classic melodrama, because the heroes are pretty much completely upright, admirable and inspiring (without ever being tiresome or sanctimonious), while the villains are intriguingly shifty and vile, running the gamut from cowardly opportunist to vicious sociopath. Chuck this in with a tightly focused plot, and it works extremely well.

Liam Neeson is perfect casting as the upright Rob. Few people do nobility and decency better than Neeson, and Rob is just about the most stand-up guy you can imagine. You can totally understand why every one of his clan seems to worship the ground he walks on. Neeson’s classical physicality and stance totally sell him as the ultimate highlander, while his kindly eyes and gentle manner make him an obvious fit as an inspiring leader.

Caton-Jones directs the action with zip, even if the film does perhaps go on a fraction too long. He sets Rob’s decency and honour at the centre of the film, and brilliantly builds the thematic story around the shifting world where old-school honour and decency is being left aside for the more ruthless realpolitik of Montrose. Rob’s old-school decency makes him the kind of hero figure you see in a traditional Western – and Caton-Jones is clearly inspired by the scope and sweep of John Ford Westerns, making excellent use of the mist and the hills.

The Scottish highlands are our wild plains, the traditional values are those of the homestead – and the communities Rob protects are presented with a warmth and glow that is never galling. A lot of this is due to Jessica Lange’s excellent performance as Mary, a woman of warmth, tenderness but also hard-hearted realism mixed with a sharp strength of will. Lange (and her lilting accent is quite lovely to listen too) handles the events that occur to her as the wife of a rebel with a dignity, but also a fierce rage just below the surface. If Rob is defending honour, she represents it.

But the real strength the film has is its villains. It has three very different but terrific antagonists, each of them brilliantly brought to life by three very good actors. John Hurt brings Montrose a brilliant sense of slightly perverted corruption, the arrogant insouciance of a man who works out there is more going on than he is being told, but not caring so long as he can turn it to his advantage. Brian Cox is excellent as the cowardly, greedy, shallow and bullying land property manager, snivelling and timid beneath his bluster.

The real swagger through comes from Tim Roth, who is quite superb as the flamboyant sadist and sociopath Archibald Cunningham. Roth marches off with the film, pitching it just right as a man who presents (and lives) a performance to the entire world: a foppish playboy who seems light and disposable, but is in fact a ruthless, dangerous man with no principles and a horrifying capacity for violence. The character has enough humanity to prevent him from becoming a caricature – he’s bitter at being a bastard, he has a strange affection for his mother. He’s aware that he’s the baddie – he just doesn’t care. In fact he loves it. He invites people to underestimate him – and takes a sadistic delight in proving them wrong. He’s a perfect dark reflection to Rob.

The film introduces him demonstrating his terrifying skill with a sword in a sporting duel: and you don’t need a PhD in storytelling to guess that the film is heading towards a second, closing sword duel between our noble hero and his sadistic opposite. When it comes, it’s a belter of a sword fight, brilliantly choreographed, that sums up the whole movie: Rob fights with a broadsword (and the film demonstrates how exhausting swinging one of those can be) and depends on directness and fairness. Cunningham fights with a rapier, is quick, indirect and gleefully delights in inflicting a number of glancing wounds. It’s one of the best sword fights (and uses of combat to communicate character) on film – and it’s engrossing.

Rob Roy is easily overlooked – but it’s a fine film, full of memorable moments and above all stuffed with terrific performances. Caton-Jones shoots the film very well, and works brilliantly with the actors. You’ll remember them all – and you’ll invest in their stories. Yes it is a little too long, and yes sometimes it’s a little too in love with the romance of the highlands – but it’s a smashing, exciting and engrossing film and you’ll certainly find plenty in it to enjoy: not least Roth’s showboating menace.

The Ipcress File (1965)

Michael Caine changes the face of spy films in The Ipcress File

Director: Sidney J. Furie

Cast: Michael Caine (Harry Palmer), Guy Doleman (Colonel Ross), Nigel Green (Major Dalby), Sue Lloyd (Jean Courtenay), Gordon Jackson (Carswell), Aubrey Richards (Dr Radcliffe), Frank Gatliff (Eric Grantby)

In the 1960s, the spy world was defined almost completely by the James Bond films. People had this idea of spies as glamorous, exciting people dealing with action and adventure in exotic locations. John Le Carré had started a counter-trend, but few alternative glances at the world of espionage landed with such skill as this adaptation of Len Deighton’s The Ipcress File.

Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) is a British agent in the secret service. Re-deployed to a section of the secret services headed up by Major Dalby (Nigel Green), he is tasked to investigate the disappearance of a number of leading scientists. But how does this link with mysterious Ipcress file?

The Ipcress File has dated very little – it’s still got a real sense of counter-culture cool, it’s engrossing and exciting, and it still makes comments that ring true about the lack of glamour in the world of espionage. It helps that it’s very well directed and designed, and that it has a star-making turn from Michael Caine (one of three he did in a row, with Zulu and Alfie). The Ipcress File looks and sounds great. It’s got an intriguing plot with twists and turns that still feel surprising and unexpected. It’s a great little spy thriller – and its deliberately small scale helps to keep it feeling fresh and inventive.

The British secret services are low-tech and underfunded. The offices are bare. Dalby’s operation is run out of what seems to a recruitment office. Cars are kept pretty basic. When Palmer is offered a new role, his first question is about a pay rise (he will get an extra £100 per year). There are no gadgets or glamour. Agents are partly selected not for their special skills but for their level of dispensability. The missions they undertake are confused or murky. The division line between allies and enemies is often unclear. Jobs are often boring or of minimal value (or both) – they’re more filing and paperwork than guns and glory.

Harry Palmer is about as opposite to Bond as you can get. He’s insolent. He’s chippy. He’s got a wry sense of humour. He struggles to hide his contempt for the toffs running the secret services. He’s a sergeant from the ranks. But he’s also cultured, well-read, intelligent and charming. He’s a great chef (surely the first film hero who cooks a detailed meal on screen – the shots of the hands were Len Deighton’s by the way). He cracks gags (more for his own amusement), often with a deadpan delivery. He has an eye for the ladies, but is hardly a Bond-style player. He’s a man of depth, who buys decent food, appreciates music and theatre, and carries a slightly bitter counter-culture grin just behind his eyes. He’s probably also the only film hero you’ll see shopping in a supermarket.

Michael Caine is perfect for this role (he went on to play it four more times). It’s a star-making role because he just drips charisma off the screen, while actually often doing very little. He underplays the role extremely effectively, using his natural calm and minimalism in front of the camera. It’s probably hard to appreciate how different it was at the time to see a man with a cockney accent play a lead role in a movie like this – other British film stars at the time had cut-glass RP accents. But Caine has a cheeky, insolent vibe that made him seem like the sort of hero you could relate to – the guy who is just working here, who could probably do a better job of running the show, but will never get that chance. Caine is also stubborn and bloody-minded, a squaddie at heart with a screw-you attitude just below the surface. He fits the role perfectly – and Palmer’s insubordination and sense of not being given his due matches up perfectly with Caine’s own (well publicised) attitudes to his place in this country’s film industry (who can forget his chippy collection of a BAFTA fellowship?).

John Barry’s score has a moody sense of cool that really helps to establish the tone of the film – its humour, its wry bitterness and its mystery thriller status. It’s an endlessly hummable series of refrains that perfectly matches up with the film’s part Third Man, part adventure fable structure. Sidney J Furie’s direction is very sharp and off-kilter, and he shoots many of the scenes as if from the perspective of an observer – the camera is positioned behind objects, or shots take place through cars or phone booths. Objects slightly obscure parts of shots. It gives us a constant feeling of being under surveillance. It increases the sense of tension and paranoia. And it makes the film look really distinctive.

If the film has a major flaw, it’s that its actual plot isn’t that strong. The reveal of the villain is made rather suddenly (and to be totally honest doesn’t really make a lot of sense). The plot line around the kidnap of the scientists is pretty unclear in both its intentions and the threat it poses to the country. The final sequence of Palmer captured and interrogated is a little underwhelming. The overall narrative never quite coalesces into something really compelling. But it somehow doesn’t quite matter, because the film is really a character study around a very cool leading character.

And it’s Caine himself who ends up carrying the movie. He’s a very different type of character. “What is he, some sort of fag?” producer Harry Saltzman apparently asked when he saw the sequence where Palmer gently cooks a proper meal for a potential girlfriend. Perhaps Palmer’s gently eyeing up of a number of women was added to counterbalance the fact that Caine plays him in this sequence as someone genuinely trying to form an emotional relationship. There are beats throughout of him as more Bond-style hero (he wakes up in his flat, and pulls a gun from the bedsheets, a visual slightly countered by the fact we’ve watched him make coffee and flick through the racing news). But really he’s a competent but slightly resentful professional, who knows he has hit a class-based glass ceiling.

The Ipcress File is a terrific movie, that looks unique and has a great soundtrack. It feels like a film that changed how heroes were perceived in British cinema – for all that films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning had placed working class men at the centre of pictures, The Ipcress File not only made one a hero of a spy thriller, but did so while making him insubordinate and chippy rather than openly rebellious. Caine is quite superb in the lead role, and he never looked back after this – while Harry Palmer is surely a character who deserves some sort of place in a list of great film spies.