We like to whinge about Hollywood’s crushing monopoly, but in fact European films are acquitting themselves quite well at the Cyprus multiplex. Colombiana, from Luc Besson’s French factory, came out this weekend, while The Three Musketeers, from the late Bernd Eichinger’s German factory, played for most of last month. Those are both gaudy action fantasies, but we’ve also had a pair of gritty British thrillers (to be fair, the French and Germans make gritty movies too; we just never see them, since they tend to be in French or German): Blitz was a shoddy cop show with Jason Statham – but The Veteran is a much better action thriller, with state-of-the-nation pretensions and the up-and-coming Toby Kebbell as Miller, a soldier just back from the war in Afghanistan.
Miller’s a decorated Paratrooper, but he’s quit the Army (“I didn’t have the zest for it anymore”) and come back to his South London council estate, where the kids are in gangs and everything’s going to hell. The first five minutes have no dialogue at all, just Miller in his post-traumatic bubble. He puts away his red beret, along with a photo of old comrades. He does push-ups. He jogs. He looks at himself in the mirror – and suddenly spits at his reflection. Later, he punches the mirror violently. He and his fellow ex-soldiers can’t find a job in civilian life, so they waste time in pubs and sleep badly at night, haunted by dreams of dead friends. And there’s another thing: we’ve already seen Miller looking at a Muslim woman in the Tube, his expression ambiguous. You can see why he’s tempted when shady Home Office bods ask him to help take down a cell of home-grown Islamists, “get the job done right this time”.
The film plays on the links between Back Home and Over There, though it seems a bit disjointed. Most of it follows two separate plots – the main one turning Miller into a secret agent, where he uncovers weapons factories and bonds with an informant named Alayna (Adi Bielski), the other one set in the council estate which appears to be inhabited solely by Miller, his old friend Fahad and a gang (including Fahad’s pre-teen brother) run by a ruthless drug lord with delusions of grandeur (at one point he quotes Sun Tzu’s The Art of War). The Afghan war was about “protecting supply lines,” says this drug lord – i.e. controlling the Taliban’s opium trade, not destroying the Taliban per se – adding that the government “needs my products” because they bring in cash at a time of recession. As a way of linking Kabul and South London, it sounds a bit strained, nor is it wholly convincing later on when the chief Home Office bod (Brian Cox) explains what’s really going on: Britain’s in the “GOD business” – guns, oil and drugs – which is why “people must remain ignorant”, which is why “triggers” like 9/11 and 7/7 must be used to maintain a climate of fear. None of this is wrong necessarily, it just seems a bit desperate, puffing up the tale of a rogue ex-Para with random conspiracy-theorizing. The Veteran’s script doesn’t really match its ambition.
That script is patchy, with clichéd dialogue (on Alayna: “She bridges two worlds, East and West”) and a worldview gleaned from paranoid bloggers. The visuals are also patchy, with some flashy moments – see for instance the early shot where we watch Miller walk down a corridor, then watch him again from the other side for no reason at all – though the scene where he punches a hole in the wall and walks out on the roof at night, surrounded by the twinkling lights of London, is rather lovely. But the film scores high on performances (Kebbell is superb), vivid action scenes and overall vibe. The council-estate stuff may be slightly irrelevant but it fits the vision of a bitter, cynical Britain, ravaged by hoodies and feeling betrayed by its leaders. Even Chechen thugs admit that Afghanistan is “a stupid war”, and Alayna makes it even clearer: “Our only option is to pull out or negotiate”.
Alayna is supposed to be a symbol – the Veteran feels love for the first time – but the relationship isn’t strong enough; when the music swells and he watches her walk away towards the end, it means nothing. Yet we still get a sense of Miller’s awakening, the soldier realising he’s been betrayed and exploited just like every Briton (says the movie) ought to realise he’s been betrayed and exploited. The Veteran loves soldiers, their courage and camaraderie – there’s a fine scene where a badly-injured Miller is tended by his friend and fellow soldier – and that love filters down, however perversely, to the truly dodgy climax where Miller literally brings the war back home, going on a shooting spree in the wilds of South London. On one level (like the similar Harry Brown) it’s right-wing vigilante fantasy – yet it’s also a cry of despair against a whole rotten System, the drug gangs in league with the banks and the secret services (sample line: “The CIA is al-Qaeda”). The ending is bleak, unremitting and like nothing you’ll find in a Hollywood action flick. So much for the crushing monopoly.
