San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Styles shows off his substance
Seeing the tabloid sensation/ pop-singer heartthrob Harry Styles as a gay cop is the advertising hook for “My Policeman” — just look at the poster — but the film itself is decidedly unsensational. Which is not to say it is bad.
It is, in fact, good: a simple, well-told story, about an impossible love decades ago, and the collateral damage that results.
Told in flashback, the film directed by highly respected British theater director Michael Grandage begins in the 1990s. Patrick (Rupert Everett) is a stroke victim, and the movie opens with him being brought by medical personnel into the seaside home of retired couple Marion (Gina McKee) and Tom (Linus Roache).
This is Marion’s idea. Tom wants nothing to do with him and refuses to see him. Marion becomes his caregiver. By bringing Patrick into the house, Marion forces all three to think about events that happened four decades earlier, which came to define all of their lives.
Fortunately for Styles fans, most of the film takes place during that past. It is the 1950s and Tom (Styles) is a freshfaced London bobby, walking a beat. He meets schoolteacher Marion (Emma Corrin, who previously played Lady Diana in “The Crown”) at the local beach and teaches her to swim. They are immediately taken with each other.
Tom introduces Marion to his friend Patrick (David Dawson), a museum curator, and together the three spend a carefree, art-filled, “Jules and Jim”-like summer. What Marion doesn’t know: Tom and Patrick are lovers.
And boy are they. Styles and Dawson certainly are committed to their roles. But of course, this is 1950s London, when being a homosexual can land you in prison.
What happens will not be spoiled here — as mentioned earlier, the story is rather slight — but Grandage sells it by relying on his actors and period detail. You feel like you’re transported to another place, and you care about the characters and what happens to them. In that sense, “My Policeman” does its job.
There is a raging debate, among both critics and the social media mobs, about
whether Styles can really act. Give him credit, though, for picking challenging roles.
Would Shia LaBeouf, whom Styles replaced in last month’s “Don’t Worry Darling” (directed, as we all know, by Styles’ current girlfriend, Olivia Wilde) have been better than Styles opposite Florence Pugh? Could Grandage, who knows actors, cast someone better than Styles in “My Policeman”?
Possibly. As would be the
case with any 20-something actor, he has room to grow. But after two films as a leading man, it’s clear that Styles is more than a handsome face. He is a real talent, and has that inexplicable X factor that makes it difficult to take your eyes off him.