The Phantom of the Open: Cheekily spirited

The Phantom of the Open (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for brief profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Not quite two months ago, The Duke treated us to the delightfully dramatized account of disabled pensioner Kempton Bunton, and 1961’s “mysterious” theft of a famed Goya painting from London’s National Gallery.

 

Maurice Flitcroft may have been even more eccentric.

 

With son Gene (Christian Lees) bringing up the rear as caddy, Maurice Flitcroft
(Mark Rylance) blithely trudges to the next tee, oblivious to the catastophic score
that he's racking up.

In 1976, with no golfing experience, Maurice — by claiming to be a professional — audaciously conned his way into the qualifying competition for that year’s British Open Championship. After all, the event was “open” … right?

His resulting score was — and remains — historic.

 

And, just as Bunton’s eventual court case prompted British law to clarify the distinction between “theft” and “borrowing,” Flitcroft’s escapade thoroughly annoyed the snooty aristocrats who ran the British Open; they quickly changed the rules, in an effort to prevent any further “incursions” by undeserving members of the lay public.

 

Not that that stopped Maurice, during subsequent years.

 

His unlikely saga has been made into a cheeky dramedy — in the irreverent style that British filmmakers do so well — by director Craig Roberts and screenwriter Simon Farnaby, the latter adapting sports journalist Scott Murray’s 2010 non-fiction book of the same title.

 

Their film is highlighted by yet another richly nuanced performance from Mark Rylance, whose impersonation of Flitcroft is flat-out astonishing. 

 

Rylance is, without question, one of today’s finest, most artfully accomplished actors. I’ve no doubt that watching him in everyday mundane tasks — such as purchasing groceries — would be just as captivating as what he does on screen.

 

Roberts and Farnaby begin their film with a prologue that sketches Maurice’s earlier days. He meets and marries Jean (Sally Hawkins), and adopts her son Michael; they subsequently augment the family with twin sons Gene and James. 

 

Years pass. Michael (Jake Davies) has grown up to become the mature, business-minded “sensible” son — read: buttoned-down twit with a stick up his fundament — while Gene and James (twins Christian and Jonah Lees), clearly more in tune with their father’s Walter Mitty nature, have become limber disco dancers.

Munich — The Edge of War: Persuasive period espionage

Munich — The Edge of War (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for profanity, dramatic intensity and brief violence

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

British journalist-turned-novelist Robert Harris has written numerous works of suspenseful historical fiction, several of which have been transformed into equally tension-laden films; 2001’s Enigma and 2010’s The Ghost Writer immediately come to mind.

 

British Prime Minister Neville Chamerlain (Jeremy Irons, seated) goes over newspaper
reports of German activities with his aide and translator, Hugh Legat (George MacKay).

Director Christian Schwochow and scripter Ben Power have done an equally fine job with their adaptation of Munich. Their handling of this World War II-based nail-biter, thanks in great part to the way cinematographer Frank Lamm frames many of his shots, has the retro atmosphere of classic 1960s Cold War thrillers such as The Spy Who Came In from the Cold and The Ipcress File.

The result so cunningly blurs the line between fact and fiction, that it’s often difficult to determine which is which.

 

This story also has extremely disturbing parallels to current real-world events, which evoke Spanish philosopher George Santayana’s timeless quote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

 

A brief prologue, set in 1932, introduces reserved Brit Hugh Legat (George MacKay) and passionate German Paul von Hartman (Jannis Niewöhner), who’ve bonded during their university years at Oxford. Both clearly love the impish Lenya (Liv Lisa Fries), although she’s probably too free-spirited for the buttoned-down Hugh.

 

Events shift to the autumn of 1938. Hugh has become a civil servant attached to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (Jeremy Irons), in offices also occupied by the latter’s principal private secretary, Sir Osmund Cleverly (Mark Lewis Jones); Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Sir Alexander Cadogan (Nicholas Farrell); and senior government official Sir Horace Wilson (Alex Jennings).

 

(All, with the exception of Legat, are key historical figures.)

 

Paul has become a German diplomat and clandestine anti-Nazi. He and Hugh haven’t spoken or seen each other during the past several years (for reasons revealed in a later flashback).

 

Tension is high, because Adolf Hitler has mobilized forces at the Czech border, with the intention of claiming the Sudetenland, a region with 3 million Germans. Should this take place, the British and French will be forced to unite and defend the Czechs, plunging Europe into war.

 

With the horrors of World War I still fresh in every British citizen’s mind, this is not a desirable outcome.