Ray Pride

There's a doggedness to Norman Jewison's better work as a director that I can't help but admire (as well as his skills as a raconteur and general curmudgeon in conversation). "The Statement" opens with what Jewison described to me as "the world's slowest car chase" and continues to flout expectations in a Ronald Harwood-written thriller about the legacy of war criminals who were not caught. Drawing on a Brian Moore novel, the story's set in modern-day France, with Michael Caine playing Pierre Brossard, a young man during WWII who was never caught for his part in an atrocity under the occupation. Caine plays a disreputable, hateful man with élan equal to that of his good-guy characters. Some of the material in the script to this international co-production feels familiar, but the performances by the other actors like a judge played by Tilda Swinton and a painstaking Colonel played by Jeremy Northam are sturdy. It's an interesting-looking movie, too, shot by Jewison's son, Kevin ("The Widow of Saint-Pierre") in a rare sort of intergenerational collaboration. With Alan Bates, Ciaran Hinds, John Neville, Charlotte Rampling. 120m.

"The Statement" opens Friday.

(2004-01-13)

Also by Ray Pride

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