The Winslow Boy (U)

The Paddington rail disaster has made all of us jittery about safety standards on public transport, so it seems an odd time to release a movie about air traffic controllers and their devil-may- care attitude to their life-and-death profession.

It is certainly a change of pace for British director Mike Newell (Four Weddings And A Funeral), and not an altogether successful one. But thanks to a fine ensemble cast headed by Grosse Pointe Blank's John Cusack, this comedy about life, love and finite airspace has its amusing and touching moments.

Nick Falzone (Cusack) is smooth, suave and an expert at "pushing tin" - handling the thousands of flights that come in and out of New York's Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports, and ensuring none of them bump into each other while he's at the scopes. Fast-talking, ice cool and obsessed by his job, Nick is at the top of his game - until Russell Bell (Billy Bob Thornton) arrives and throws a spanner in the works.

Having served his time at Albuquerque, Phoenix and Denver, Russell has moved to the east coast in search of heavier traffic. As slick and quick as Nick, he's famous for once standing in the turbulence wake of a departing 747, just to see what it felt like. A less-than- friendly rivalry develops between the two men, though the hostility hots up when Falzone has a fling with Barr's wife Mary (Angelina Jolie) and he returns the favour with Nick's spouse Connie (Cate Blanchett).

Based on an article first published in the New York Times magazine, Pushing Tin is an unusual mix of farce, drama and romance set in an unfamiliar but intriguing milieu. Snazzy computer graphics help convey just how stressful the protagonists' work can be, while Glen and Les Charles' screenplay bristles with snappy banter and razor-sharp one-liners.

Neil Smith

TERENCE Rattigan's hoary old play about a naval cadet accused of stealing a postal order has long been a fixture on the rep theatre circuit - and the original film version, made by Anthony Asquith, turns up again and again on TV. David Mamet's new screen adaptation can't help but prompt the question: do we really need yet another Winslow Boy?

Mamet's argument is that the play is a miracle of construction. In bringing it to the screen, he is paying tribute to Rattigan's craftsmanship meaning this is a faithful adaptation. Mamet recreates the stuffy world of middle-class Edwardian England in the kind of detail that can't help but rekindle memories of equally fussily designed Merchant-Ivory movies.

Mamet being Mamet, the real power of the film lies in the words. The characters here - soldier, suffragette, banker, lawyer - speak very differently from the mobsters and con-artists who've flitted through his earlier films as director (House Of Games, The Spanish Prisoner), but their language is equally coded. Nobody, apart from the boy plaintively protesting his innocence first to his father (Nigel Hawthorne) and then to the dashing lawyer (Jeremy Northam) who may clear him, ever says quite what he or she means. Conversations become mini-duels.

The Winslow Boy is impeccably acted throughout. Hawthorne, in particular, brings gravitas and pathos to his role as the father who sacrifices everything he has to win a victory that will prove pyrrhic at best.

Mamet doesn't exactly startle us with new insights or dazzle us with flashes of visual ingenuity. What he offers instead is an expert rendition of a very old favourite.

Geoffrey Macnab

Copyright 1999
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