2003

CinemaSerf

"Jamie" (Patrick Gibson) gets home after a night on the tiles and has a rather nervous, drunken, chat with his equally sozzled father (Andrew Tiernan). It's the oddness of that chat that straddles the next morning when it's clear that he is about to embark on his first tour of duty in the British Army. The two men are clearly fond of each other, but that isn't something either are especially adept at putting into words, certainly not face-to-face. Maybe a phone call as he waits for a train to his barracks? Maybe not even then? It's too short, really, to do enough justice to the subject matter or to either characterisation, but by using some quite intimate hand-held photography, it does still manage to elicit some of the senses of apprehension and pride felt by both men starkly appreciating that their lives are about to change forever. It's quite poignant reminder that most of the military are just made up of ordinary people from ordinary families with ordinary worries and might make you want to hug your nearest and dearest a bit more often.