My Policeman: Movie Review

Cast: Harry Styles, Emma Corrin, David Dawson, Gina McKee, Linus Roache, Rupert Everett

Director: Michael Grandage

In many ways, My Policeman is a very conventional tale of fobridden love and its consequences told in a somewhat formulaic manner.

Harry Styles stars as PC Tom Burgess a gay policeman in 1950s Brighton in the UK.

As the force cracks down on homosexuality, arresting those suspected of it, Burgess forms a relationship with local museum curator Patrick Hazlewood (Dawson).

But not after he's ended up marrying Marion (The Crown's Corrin, woefully underdeveloped but impressive in her role) and trying to fit in, while wrestling with his guilt.

Told in flashback with present day scenes being helmed by Gina McKee as Marion, Linus Roache as Tom and Rupert Everett as Patrick, and necessitated by the arrival of a sick Patrick, the film's desire to flip between worlds is nothing more than a narrative need.

There's supposed to be tension in among this trio, but in truth, nothing really develops out of the ordinary and the excessively sedate pace of My Policeman is almost stultefyingly dull, with little offering anything new to the genre, and little really standing out here.

Styles and Dawson aren't exactly a magnetic pairing with moments feeling scripted rather than organic. And unfortunately, Corrin's sidelined for most of the movie after an early flourish, an almost fatal flaw to any kind of triangle.

Perhaps a little more successful are the present day scenes, with resentments and silences providing more than any scripted words or overblown actions could convey.

A muted palette adds to the funereal feeling of proceedings, with no directorial flair to speak of emerging from the slow burn on screen.

My Policeman maybe suffers from the worst of all crimes - the movie clearly doesn't want to push conventions, or try and break through the tropes of its genre.

As a result, what could have been a devastatingly emotional movie turns out to be a fizzing heap of plodding inanity that's depressingly soulless throughout.

My Policeman is streaming on Prime Video from Friday November 4.