Queen & Country

A direct sequel to 1987’s Hope and Glory, Queen and Country begins where that film left off, continuing director John Boorman’s autobiographical account of his relationship with war and the collateral effect it has on the people at its periphery. When last we saw Billy Rowan, the impish schoolboy who served as Boorman’s alter ego in Hope and Glory, he was thanking Hitler for blowing his schoolhouse to smithereens. Queen and Country catches up with Bill nine years later, the lad now a strapping young man with an appropriately adult name to match. It’s 1952, and the Korean War is in full swing. Bill, a burgeoning cinephile without a lick of interest in being forced to shoot at strangers several thousand miles away, is whiling away his youth on the idyllic U.K. island home he shares with his parents, but it’s only a matter of time before his conscription notice arrives. It’s at boot camp that Bill meets Percy, the two troublemakers becoming fast friends as they do their best to avoid one war while grappling with the fallout from another.