Queen and Country

The story is minimal, just a series of events in the life of a young man and his circle, but every scene is rendered with such authenticity that it’s riveting, almost like it’s a privilege to be stepping back in time.

Boorman retains the sense of melancholy and, ultimately, optimism from the first film. That, coupled with excellent portrayals of what could have been stock war-movie characters, makes Queen and Country a worthy follow-up to a classic.

The saving grace of Queen and Country is that its nostalgia is not laced with sentimentality. Even working in this conventional mode, Boorman doesn’t try to strong-arm us into blubberiness.

What Queen And Country has going for it that admirers of the original will appreciate—and that total novices can enjoy just as much—is how skillfully Boorman takes major historical events and filters them through small, personal moments.

Queen and Country shows a modern sensibility in its young hero’s all-encompassing disgust with the military mind-set, but it has one foot in Britain’s old “Carry On” comedies, and a subplot in which Percy and Redmond steal the RSM’s beloved regimental clock could come straight out of the old Henry Fonda classic “Mr. Roberts.”

Admittedly modest, but the epitome of jolly, this is like the companionable second volume of an autobiography in film form – you'll whip through it in no time, and come out wanting more.

The film lacks an ability to construct significant instances of character drama as symbolic of larger concerns pertaining to nationalist dilemmas.