Veteran British Director John Boorman returns to his roots with this new movie …..his first for several years …picking up the story line from his masterful Oscar multi-nominated semi-autobiographical ‘Hope & Glory’ about a nine year old boy living through the London Blitz . Now a decade later young Bill Rohan (aka Boorman) is 18 and is conscripted to do his two year National Service in the Army. WW2 may be over but now there is the Korean War. However instead of being drafted to fight in the Far East after their training is over, Bill and his best buddy Percy end up with Sergeant stripes on their uniforms and teaching typing and map reading to the next set of new recruits.
Their lives on the Base are not that cozy though as they are answerable to a martinet Sergeant Major whose fastidious instance of enforcing every minute rule of Army Law makes their lives hell. It doesn’t actually please the Commanding Officer neither. Percy however decides that the Sergeant Major needs to be stopped at all coats and gets involved with a rather sly Private to get his revenge once and for all.
When the two teenage soldiers are off-duty they head to the nearby town looking for love. It looks like that this may be in the form of two local nurses, but then one night Bill spots a rather mysterious beauty and he is immediately smitten. She allows him to call her Ophelia as she is obviously a troubled and somewhat tragic figure and it is only when he accidentally discovers her real identity does he realise that this aloof aristocratic young woman is completely out of his league.He seeks solace in the arms of Percy’s nurse girlfriend and finally loses his virginity which is something that brash mouthy Percy is still shy about. He will eventually, and keeping it in the family too, as he hooks up with Bill’s older sister who has just left her husband back in Canada.
This dramedy shows a perfect slice of a idyllic middle-class life in post-war Britain culminating with the Coronation of the new Queen. Bill’s family live on a picturesque fairy-tale private island in the middle of the River Thames which seems to be untouched by the ravages of the recent war or even a hint of the hardships of food/clothes rationing that was still in existence at that time. Even as the plot unfurls to a finale and there are hints that Bill (aka Boorman) is about to venture into a life of motion pictures, it all seems a little too easy for words.
It’s a very pleasant and enjoyable memoir but a tad disappointing after its excellent prequel which is still one of very best wartime dramas from a child’s prospective. It is less compelling partly due to a weaker cast with Callum Turner as Bill who bears an uncanny resemblance to Eddie Redmayne but sadly lacks his charisma, and a very quirky Caleb Landry Jones as Percy whose humor was totally misplaced and fell very flat. However David Thewlis’s rather magnificent turn as the bully Sergeant Major does make up for this in part.
Queen and Country will most definitely appeal to Anglophiles who love period dramas that the Brits excel at, and may be a small sop to those still bruising with the recent news that Downton Abbey will soon be no more.
