Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Cold War spy thriller adapted from the 1974 novel by John Le Carre. 

Gary Oldman is George Smiley, leading an all-star cast that also includes Kathy Burke, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones and Mark Strong. 

The plot follows Smiley’s efforts to track down a double agent within the British secret service. I found it often too complicated to follow. I also got annoyed with the unrelenting greys and the deliberately grim visuals. Most of the “drama” comes from flashbacks or reported speech, making it less than compelling. I could appreciate that it was an expertly made film but it was too focused on mood and style to ever pull me in.

Layer Cake (2004)

Brit crime thriller starring Daniel Craig as a drug dealer who – just as he’s about to retire – becomes wrapped up in a dangerous world of gangsters. 

It’s highly stylised, but oddly unsatisfying. The twists and turns of the plot are difficult to follow. And some parts seem clichéd, such as the Scorsese-lite touch of using “Gimme Shelter” on the soundtrack. It’s violent and nasty, too. 

Michael Gambon is an impressively horrid villain, and Daniel Craig is always watchable, but there’s a shallowness that makes it hard to like. It aims for “gritty” but only achieves “depressing”.

Dunkirk (2017)

Stunningly dramatic war film. There’s no let up in the tension, made more extreme by Hans Zimmer’s remarkable music, which – brilliantly – is sometimes indistinguishable from the sound effects. A few things stop it being a masterpiece. The fragmented timelines of the three story threads (it’s a Christopher Nolan film, like the muddled Inception) make it slightly difficult to follow – especially since you cannot easily tell which (masked) Spitfire pilot is which. There’s very little dialogue, so you’re reliant on visual signposting. The characters aren’t as developed as they would be in the superior 1917. Also, the aspect ratio keeps changing, which can be distracting. And I just can’t get along with Kenneth Branagh, whose Commander Bolton has to be a really nice guy as well as a super-tough naval hero.

These gripes aside, it’s incredibly exciting from start to finish. It captures the mad panic of war, if not the blood, guts and pain. But that image of the doomed Spitfire, completely out of fuel and slowly losing height over the coastline, is one that will stay with me.

Black Hawk Down (2001)

Brutal military drama by Ridley Scott that details the US involvement in the 1993 civil war in Somalia.

A UN taskforce is sent into Mogadishu to capture the leader of the militia, Mohamed Farrah Hassan Aidid. It sounds straightforward enough, but the mission goes horribly wrong when a US helicopter is shot down. Chaos ensues, and the Americans seem naive and ill-prepared. You know there isn’t going to be a simple resolution or a happy ending.

The film is extremely violent – sometimes almost unbearably so. In no way does it glamorise war (you see body parts galore), but – perhaps inevitably – it does only show it from the Americans’ perspective.

The ensemble cast has no real star or focal point. This has the benefit of making it about the team rather than any one “hero”.

Being a Ridley Scott film, it looks stunning and the soldiers’ relentless, harrowing experience of being under constant attack is detailed brilliantly.

The Revenant (2015)

Unrelentingly grim and bloody tale of North American frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) trying to survive against all the odds. It’s 1823, and desperate, isolated communities of trappers and hunters battle it out in the frozen wilds. Everything horrible you can imagine happening to Glass happens to him. He witnesses his wife’s murder. He’s attacked and badly maimed by a bear. He’s nearly smothered to death by a crazed colleague. He’s buried alive. He witnesses his son’s murder. He’s swept away in river rapids. He’s shot at. He falls off a cliff into a tree. And he has to sleep inside his dead horse (after pulling out the innards). Plus, he’s intent on exacting his revenge – whatever the cost.

It’s not exactly cheerful. But the film has a primal intensity that keeps you hooked. The scenery is stunning. And DiCaprio is watchable, even beneath the beard, blood, filth and fur. Ultimately, though, it’s too harrowing and brutal to constitute entertainment. It’s unclear what you’re meant to take away from it. I was left feeling troubled and disturbed.