Review : The Great Escaper 7/10 Stars
By Simon McCarthy
A well rounded little ghost story marks the end of two illustrious careers.
Michael Caine finds himself back in the familiar role of hero loner pensioner. But don’t get your hopes up about seeing any more of this spaghetti Western style series in the future. There will be no “ A fistful of bus tickets”, or “For a few biscuits more “ etc, because Sir Michael Caine is retiring.
Before going any further, some weirdness has to be pointed out about this film. The Great Escaper, released on October 6th 2023, starring Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson, is based on the real life World War Two veteran Bernard Jordan and his unsanctioned trip from a nursing home in the UK to Northern France, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings.
But this is not the only film recently released about this exact same person and incident; it was also portrayed by Pierce Brosnan of 007 fame in a film called The Last Rifleman. This was released just four weeks later, on November 5th.
The Great Escaper was shot entirely in the UK. In a superb irony, this was apparently to avoid the stress of travelling overseas for the older actors. The well crafted script mostly avoids the sentimentality that I was half expecting. It not only depicts convincingly the couple of battle scenes but also the scenes of nursing home banality. From beginning to end, the film cleverly modulates the audience’s emotional response, this is set anywhere from a low simmer to a rolling boil. I was surprised how many people said they cried while watching it. Unpacking this phenomenon further would be an interesting undertaking and require the spilling of a lot more ink.
It is hard to imagine anyone doing a better job than the late Glenda Jackson of portraying Caine’s wartime sweetheart and long shuffling partner Rene. The last time the two actors starred together was in 1975 in The Romantic Englishwoman, I like the idea that the two actors have known each other almost as long as the characters they are portraying have. The forward and reversing up and down memory lane was written masterfully for Caine and Jackson with only very minimal clashing of gears. It should be noted that the very expressive East London actor Danielle Vitalis does a brilliant job as Jackson’s carer.
“What’s the secret to living so long?”
“Not dying”
This isn’t actually a line from the film, but it could well have been and would have epitomised Caine’s straight talking character, so... pretend it was.
If I had one criticism of the idyllically located nursing home, it would not be the food or staff who are just marvellous, nor would it be the residents spacious rooms, which are truly opulent dare I say incredible in comparison to any facilities I have ever visited, but no, it would be the access. The main staircase is an accident waiting to happen, and I cannot believe it conforms to any regulations. Also, the stone steps leading to the main entrance from the street look very steep and lack suitable handrails. How a wheelchair could gain entry to the building was tragically never explained in the film.
As Caine heads off to the shops in the mornings to buy more and more chocolate with which to wheedle his way into Glenda Jackson’s affections, he often encounters some rather rude young guys on the esplanade. This, in due course, sets the scene for some geriatric instigated payback. However, you are going to be badly let down this time if you were hoping for a rerun of the fate meted out by pensioner Caine in his gory 2010 film Harry Brown. There was not a single shank to the heart, and no popping of caps in any asses occurs.
The film has given us a new line for Caine impersonators to perfect, “Ninety year old coffin-dodger honours the glorious dead,” to go with the established favourite from The Italian Job, “You were only meant to blow the fucking doors off.”
Another war story we hear apart from Caine’s is from a RAF bomber pilot played by John Standing (in 1976 Standing played opposite Caine as the vicar in The Eagle has Landed). A bomber pilot’s job required not only dying at a rate higher than any other allied units, 1 out of 2 aircrew didn’t survive, but also shouldering the guilt of being ordered to bomb cities and deliberately target the civilians who lived there. As you can imagine, this caused to come into being a large number of ghosts and it is ghosts in various guises that permeate the plot and subplots of the film; they are what make many of the characters do what they do and also do what they shouldn’t do. WW2 was arguably the most momentous event in human history, those that survived death or injury were traumatised, and it has been said it left a whole generation with PTSD.
The Great Escaper was to be Glenda Jackson’s last role, as she died in June 2023. Over her long career she won a load of awards, including two Academy Awards for best actress. This will not surprise you if you watch the film. Although she was once described by the Encyclopaedia of British Film as being blazingly intelligent, she left acting for politics in 1992 and served as a Labour MP for 23 years. In 2015, she came to her senses and returned to acting at the age of 79.
Caine is inextricably woven into postwar popular culture, his competent and confident acting helped make a space for working class actors to get into film, to this end, he deliberately kept his Cockney accent. He has cut a familiar and dashing screen figure for more than six decades and has accompanied his audiences on their own journeys all the way to this seaside treasure, maybe not a gemstone, but perhaps for many just as valuable, a rather pretty little shell. (Probably a cockle or mussel).
Postscript:
Michael Caine’s father was a porter at London’s Billingsgate fish market. Traditionally, the only people allowed to trolley fish around the market were licenced fish porters. The role dates back at least to the reign of Henry VIII.
