My Policeman: Quietly arresting

My Policeman (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual candor and nudity

Available via: Movie theaters and (starting November 4) Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

Celebrated British theatrical director Michael Grandage’s roots show in this adaptation of Bethan Roberts’ 2012 novel, which frequently feels more like an intimate stage production than a film.

 

And two become three: Museum curator Patrick (David Dawson, left) is delighted to
discover that visiting couple Marion (Emma Corrin) and Tom (Harry Styles) have a
genuine interest in art.

The melancholy, regret-laden character study centers on three people who — out of desire, desperation and love — have caused each other a great deal of pain.

The kicker, in Ron Nyswaner’s script, is the jolt upon realizing that what seemed like happenstance actually was premeditation.

 

The story opens in the 1990s, in the East Sussex seaside resort of Brighton. Tom (Linus Roache) and his wife Marion (Gina McKee) argue over her decision to allow Patrick (Rupert Everett), an ailing, long-estranged friend, to live with them while he recuperates from a stroke.

 

We’ve no clue what prompts the hostility, which Tom refuses to discuss, preferring to retreat to long walks along the massive sea walls that protect the cliffs above (an impressively dramatic image given imposing ferocity by the way cinematographer Ben Davis frames the crashing waves).

 

Grandage and Nyswaner then slide back to the 1950s. Newly minted schoolteacher Marion (Emma Corrin), enjoying a day at the beach with friends, is taken with Tom (Harry Styles), a handsome young policeman. Sympathetic to her fear of the water, he offers to teach her to swim in the local lido (public outdoor pool), if she’ll broaden his horizons by recommending some good books and classic artists.

 

She’s charmed by this. A copper, wanting to better himself?

 

The days pass idly and happily. They visit a gallery, where Tom is drawn to a painting of storm-tossed seas. Patrick (David Dawson), the curator, offers some learned observations; then, sensing kindred spirits, he impulsively offers them tickets to a classical music concert. Tom falls asleep. (So would I.)

 

They become inseparable, a larkish three musketeers enjoying life to the fullest whenever possible. Patrick’s cultured sensibilities are more perfectly aligned with Marion’s, and his solicitous attention to her begins to feel like something more than friendship, which Tom can’t help noticing (prompting Constant Companion to mutter, “Threesomes never work out”).

 

But is Patrick actually interested in Marion? Or is she merely an excuse for his close proximity to Tom?

All the Old Knives: Quite dull

All the Old Knives (2022) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity, sexuality, nudity and violence

Available via: Movie theaters and Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

Way back in the day, as his TV series The Outer Limits was becoming too expensive, creator/producer Leslie Stevens coined the phrase “bottle show” for a budget-saving episode that minimized cast members, sets, shooting schedules and effects.

 

It begins as an intimate meal, but no: Celia (Thandiwe Newton) knows that she's
actually being interrogated by former lover Henry (Chris Pine), regarding long-ago
events that could leave her continued survival in doubt.

He wrote and directed “Controlled Experiment”: the first known case of a deliberate bottle show, and one that indeed rescued his series from financial peril.

Bottle shows subsequently became ubiquitous, with prominent — and often popular — examples on series as diverse as Star Trek, The X-Files, Friends, Mad About You, Breaking Bad and Grey’s Anatomy.

 

When the pandemic closed down conventional filmmaking for well over a year, innovative directors responded with the cinematic equivalent of bottle shows; examples have been trickling into theaters and streaming services during the past few months.

 

Some, like The Outfit, made ingenious use of such limitations.

 

All the Old Knives, sadly, succumbs to every possible pitfall awaiting such a shoot.

 

Olen Steinhauer’s 2015 novel may have been another popular entry in his oeuvre of best-selling espionage thrillers, but its adaptation here by director Janus Metz is the very definition of boring: slow, dull, overcooked and seemingly interminable. The “bottle” restraints are obvious: incessantly repeated flashbacks, relentlessly tight two-shots during sluggish exchanges between stars Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton, and ludicrously empty sets.

 

(A posh Carmel restaurant, with nobody else in it during an entire afternoon and evening? Puh-leaze.)

 

The story is pure John Le Carré territory: the eight-years-later search for a mole who compromised a critical operation in the CIA’s Austrian field office, with catastrophic results. 

 

The year is 2020. Ilyas Shushani (Orli Shuka), a long-hunted terrorist, finally has been captured, and — just before he dies (we know not how or why, which seems odd) — he shares a juicy nugget of information that reaches the CIA’s Vienna section chief, Vick Wallinger (Laurence Fishburne). He assigns veteran field agent Henry Pelham (Pine) to investigate all staff members who monitored a horrific attack on Flight 127, grounded by terrorists at the Vienna Airport back in January 2012, when everybody aboard ultimately was killed.

 

Although half a dozen people were intimately involved with the unfolding 24-hour crisis — including one who committed suicide just a few months later, which seems very suspicious — Henry focuses on only two (a decision undoubtedly prompted by bottle shoot limitations, rather than anything remotely approaching logic or common sense).

 

They are second-in-command Bill Compton (Jonathan Pryce), retired and living in London; and fellow operative Celia Harrison (Newton), retired and living in Carmel with her family.

 

And, small detail: Henry and Celia were lovers, back in 2012.

 

Which seems an insane breach of protocol, but — as Henry assures Wallinger — “I’ll know if she lies.”

 

Whatever.