Welcome to another edition of Adam's Reviews!! Queue in intro music**
Today movie review is the drama For Country and Queen (1981) starring my man Denzel Washington portraying Reuben who was born in a former British colony and came to London as a baby. He put his life on the line in the British army for nine years as a paratrooper and had tours in the streets of Belfast and on the muddy fields of the Falkland Islands. He returns to civilian life, arriving back to a high-rise government apartment which is located in a low-expectation existence in the ghetto streets of London. Reuben is surrounded with crime, drugs and disillusionment. Reuben quickly suffers from job rejections, racism at the hands of a trigger happy police officer and the final humiliation of reapplying for British citizenship (due to the 1981 Nationality Act). His frustration is shared by a white friend Fish who lost his leg during the war and his own inner demons which result into alcoholism and violence while trying to build a young family in a household falling apart and gas and electricity disconnection. He is pursued by a local drug dealer, a white man he knows from the army who wants Reuben as an enforcer/right-hand man however Reuben doesn't want any part of that shady life.
Denzel playing a British - wow who would have thought butttt aside his very interesting Sarf London/cockney accent this movie fails big time. The budget doesn't help with the Falklands War which is scrapped to a quick scene where a few soldiers are looking out of a ship doorway seeing flashes of gunfire away in the distance. In others words this movie looks more like a TV drama mainly due to the low budget and acting that belongs in a TV drama. The filmmakers seem to place one subplot to another and cant make up their minds, whether to have a thriller plot or a weird half-hearted love affair with a spontaneous woman who has a dislike for guns or the sympathetic hero helping his friend with money or due to a series of unpredictable events ends with a character being in the wrong place at the wrong. The movie feels like a dismal social study rather than a character study where it dvelves into different subplots including the love interest but scraps it out straight away. The filmmakers lost their faith in the interest of Reuben as a character and the people around him by rushing the story with interchangeable thriller elements. A major point where film has gone wrong is the last scene where a decorated soldier character will know exactly where and when to position himself to shoot and be 'under the sniper's radar', however this is not in the case in this film. Overall 4.8/10.
Today movie review is the drama For Country and Queen (1981) starring my man Denzel Washington portraying Reuben who was born in a former British colony and came to London as a baby. He put his life on the line in the British army for nine years as a paratrooper and had tours in the streets of Belfast and on the muddy fields of the Falkland Islands. He returns to civilian life, arriving back to a high-rise government apartment which is located in a low-expectation existence in the ghetto streets of London. Reuben is surrounded with crime, drugs and disillusionment. Reuben quickly suffers from job rejections, racism at the hands of a trigger happy police officer and the final humiliation of reapplying for British citizenship (due to the 1981 Nationality Act). His frustration is shared by a white friend Fish who lost his leg during the war and his own inner demons which result into alcoholism and violence while trying to build a young family in a household falling apart and gas and electricity disconnection. He is pursued by a local drug dealer, a white man he knows from the army who wants Reuben as an enforcer/right-hand man however Reuben doesn't want any part of that shady life.
Denzel playing a British - wow who would have thought butttt aside his very interesting Sarf London/cockney accent this movie fails big time. The budget doesn't help with the Falklands War which is scrapped to a quick scene where a few soldiers are looking out of a ship doorway seeing flashes of gunfire away in the distance. In others words this movie looks more like a TV drama mainly due to the low budget and acting that belongs in a TV drama. The filmmakers seem to place one subplot to another and cant make up their minds, whether to have a thriller plot or a weird half-hearted love affair with a spontaneous woman who has a dislike for guns or the sympathetic hero helping his friend with money or due to a series of unpredictable events ends with a character being in the wrong place at the wrong. The movie feels like a dismal social study rather than a character study where it dvelves into different subplots including the love interest but scraps it out straight away. The filmmakers lost their faith in the interest of Reuben as a character and the people around him by rushing the story with interchangeable thriller elements. A major point where film has gone wrong is the last scene where a decorated soldier character will know exactly where and when to position himself to shoot and be 'under the sniper's radar', however this is not in the case in this film. Overall 4.8/10.