For Queen & Country

Denzel Washington plays Rueben James, a former British paratrooper who has seen action in Belfast and the Falkland Islands who returns to his London home (oddly, a flat which presumably has been vacant for the best part of a decade) in his old stamping ground of a run-down housing estate where crime is rife. Rueben tries to go straight but, needless to say, circumstances conspire to make sure that that doesn’t happen.

A hodge-podge of a film, part Mike Leigh, part Spike Lee, one is given to wondering how For Queen & Country ever saw the light of day. Martin Stellman’s debut as a film director (he co-wrote Quadrophenia, 1979), and he has not directed another since, is an ungainly affair co-written by the director with Trix Worrell made even more ungainly by Michael Kamen’s typically ‘80s score.  

As it was co-produced by Working Title who had produced the indie films My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and Sammy And Rosie Get Laid (1987) one assumes it was, like those films, intended as a commentary on Thatcher’s England. The trouble is that if initially the film seems to be modelled on similar American urban ghetto-cum-race films, set in say, Detroit or Chicago, as it progresses it starts to look like some post-apocalyptic sci-fi dystopian fantasy. But if this is strange, nothing is stranger than the casting of Washington in the lead role.

Washington was still finding his feet in the late ‘80’s so perhaps he needed the money but why the producers cast him is mystery, Although he is, as ever, dependable he might as well be playing in front of a green screen for all his connection to what is going on around him (in this respect the film serves as a compendium of his acting mannerisms).  And as for his Cockney accent well, it just doesn't convince (sometime his lines seem dubbed).  Indeed, the acting all round is pretty awful although the ill-judged direction and awkward script should probably bear more of the blame for this than the performers themselves.

There are some very good. even remarkable feature debuts but For Queen & Country really suffers from its director's lack of experience.      

 

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