The hilarious highlight of John Boorman’s HOPE AND GLORY (1987), nominated for five Oscars: 9-year-old Bill Rohan rejoices in the destruction of his school by an errant Luftwaffe bomb. QUEEN & COUNTRY picks up the story nearly a decade later as Bill (Boorman’s alter-ego) begins basic training in the early Fifties, during the Korean War. Bill (played by a charming Callum Turner) is joined by a trouble-making army mate, Percy (Caleb Landry Jones). They never get near Korea, but engage in a constant battle of wits with the Catch-22-worthy Sgt. Major Bradley — the brilliant David Thewlis. Richard E. Grant is their superior, the veddy, veddy, infinitely put-upon, aptly-named Major Cross. A superb ensemble cast limns a wonderfully funny and often moving depiction of a still-recovering postwar England. (Karen Cooper, Director, Film Forum)
We are very pleased to open Mr. Boorman’s QUEEN & COUNTRY on February 27 at the Royal, Playhouse and Town Center. The film has garnered very positive reviews, including a New York Times Critic’s Pick from A.O. Scott, in which he wrote “Mr. Boorman approaches his story in the relaxed and generous manner of a raconteur, charming the audience rather than pushing us through the machinery of a plot…[the film] doesn’t quite have the bittersweet intensity of its precursor. The terrible magic of the war is missing, and so is the heightened, wide-eyed perceptiveness of the child protagonist. A young man is a more pedestrian creature, and the ’50s a quieter decade. Bill’s family, the focus of much of the drama in “Hope and Glory,” is glimpsed here in a few lovely scenes. The update is welcome. And so is the portrait, fleeting yet precisely detailed, of Britain at a time of change. The overt manifestation of that change is the arrival of the sovereign who gives QUEEN & COUNTRY its title, and who inspires cynicism and patriotism in its characters. But as the young Elizabeth II takes the throne, you can feel the ground shifting, and a different Britain coming into view: the one that would give the world angry young playwrights, rock ’n’ roll bands and resourceful, iconoclastic filmmakers like John Boorman.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qG1TvckA-Q&feature=youtu.be
