Fitting swan-song for Jackson and Caine
The Great Escaper (M, 96 mins) Directed by Oliver Parker Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ****
Bernie Jordan became a feel-good story of the UK summer in 2014, when he “escaped” from the retirement home he was living in and made his own way across the channel to attend the 70th anniversary commemoration of D-Day.
The British tabloid press wrote up Bernie’s exploits as though the plucky old bugger had scaled fences and eluded prison guards to get to France, when in fact he just walked out early one morning, caught a commuter train from Hove to Brighton and then bought a seat on the ferry to Calais.
When Bernie returned a few days later, the papers were full of his exploits. Bernie and his wife Irene – who knew exactly what he was up to – were unlikely celebrities.
The Great Escaper takes the bare bones of this real-life adventure and weaves a wholly imagined story around it. But although The Great Escaper is based on a true story only in the very loosest sense, it still comes together as an engrossing and involving film, with some moments of genuine emotion among the expected beats.
The film could easily have played out as an exercise in nostalgia, but director Oliver Parker (Made in Dagenham) and writer William Ivory have taken a tougher route.
Although they have made an easily likeable and enjoyable film, The Great Escaper is still pleasingly gritty at times, with pointed things to say about the way we romanticise and lionise our veterans, without necessarily looking after them.
In the leads, Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson are as perfect as you would expect.
Caine has said this will be his last film. If that is how it turns out, then he is going out on a high note.
Caine’s trademark has always been that drop-dead comic timing, seemingly wrapped around a steely and implacably courageous core, and at 90, everything we have loved about his work is intact here.
As Irene (Rene), Glenda Jackson – in her last role – is as spiky and ablaze as ever. Even while her body was failing, Jackson’s wit and mischievousness is undimmed.
Watch her here in a brief moment, responding to a flashed-back recollection of a first sexual encounter with Bernie in a dawn-lit field after a night out dancing.
Jackson packs more pathos and joy into one curl of her lip than some actors will locate in entire careers. RIP.
Behind the camera, veteran Christopher Ross puts in a great shift. Mid-budget crowd-pleasers are too often a procession of over-lit mid-shots, designed to be nothing more than serviceable when the film makes its transition to a small-screen streamer.
But Ross shoots The Great Escaper like a movie, toggling between bold close-ups and wide-screen landscapes with the same flair and inventiveness he brought to Sally El Hosaini’s The Swimmers in 2022. (Personally, I reckon Ross is still trying to atone for being DOP on Cats in 2019. Though he should know the cinematography was the least of that debacle’s problems.)
The Great Escaper is a solid work. Whenever the film leans into flag-waving or mawkishness, Parker and his team are quick to pull it back with a sharp cut, or one of Jackson’s withering asides.
There’s an unexpected second meaning in the title, that surfaces only late in the film, when someone contemplates getting older as being like a prison, and that there is only one way to escape it. It’s a good line – and it amplified my appreciation of the care and rigour that had gone into making this film a more authentic and resonant yarn than you might be expecting. Bravo.
After advance previews in select cinemas this weekend, The Great Escaper will open nationwide on March 7.