The Great Escaper: Sir Michael Caine’s Final Role

One of the most incredible things about “The Greatest Generation” is that they never really knew how great they were. Yet, with every passing year, it becomes increasingly apparent to the rest of us (especially Gen X’ers, who have seen who came after). Indeed, at the advanced age of 90, the late Bernard Jordan realized he probably would not live to see the 75^th anniversary of the Normandy landing, so he was determined to attend the 70^th, even if he had to “escape” from his nursing home, which is essentially what he did. Give thanks to the Allied veterans like Jordan who truly saved civilization by watching Oliver Parker’s The Great Escaper, now available on the PBS app.

If this sounds familiar, maybe you already watched Terry Loane’s The Last Rifleman, starring Pierce Brosnan. It also happens to be a worthy film. Both follow similar story arcs, but Parker and screenwriter William Ivory specifically identify their protag as Jordan, a Royal Navy vet, while Brosnan’s Artie Crawford served with the Royal Ulster Rifles.

At 90, Jordan is understandably feeling his age, but not as much as his beloved but ailing wife Irene. She needs the care-giver staff close at hand, but he is sufficiently ambulatory to consider traveling to France. Unfortunately, the home director wasn’t adequately organized to book him into a tour package, if she even tried, so he simply ambles off on his own.

Of course, his service opens many doors and forges an immediate rapport with Arthur Howard-Johnson, a veteran of the RAF. In fact, both Jordan and Howard-Johnson unjustly carry guilt over wartime tragedies beyond their control. Hopefully, their pilgrimage will help them come to terms with their lingering ghosts.

Frankly, both Michael Caine and Brosnan did Jordan equal justice with their performances. It would be hard to favor one over the other. Nevertheless, thematically, Jordan seems like a fitting role for Caine to end his career on (having announced his retirement at an early screening of this film). However, Parker and the special effects team to a vastly superior job of recreating the war during flashback sequences than Loane and his colleagues.

John Standing (who served in WWII and whose ancestor built Bletchley Park) is also truly outstanding as Howard-Johnson. Arguably, his portrayal is even more conflicted and vulnerable than Caine’s work. (Yet, The Last Rifleman similarly boasts John Amos’s moving final screen appearance, as a somewhat analogous character).

Elizabeth is Missing, on PBS

As murder mysteries go, this one is relatively small in scale, but you still wouldn’t call it a cozy. There are really two mysteries in need of solving that occurred decades apart, but they will get entwined in the increasingly confused mind of the aging protagonist in Elizabeth is Missing, which premieres this Sunday on PBS.

Maud Horsham greatly relies on post-it notes to keep to her daily schedule, but she still functions relatively well on her own at the start of this adaptation of Emma Healey’s novel. However, the discovery of an old lady’s compact buried in her friend Elizabeth Markham’s garden appears to strike a chord with Horsham. When she returns to visit the next day, she finds her friend mysteriously absent, but her eye glasses are plainly visible on the kitchen table. Horsham comes back several days in a row, but there is never any sign of Markham.

The experience brings back painful (and possibly suppressed) memories from Horsham’s childhood, when her glamorous older sister Susan “Sukey” Jefford also disappeared under mysterious circumstances. At the time, suspicion fell on their nebbish boarder, but the ravings of a mad homeless women keep echoing in Horsham’s head. Although she is start to drift more frequently into the past, Horsham is still determined to find Markham, to help redeem herself for failing her sister.

Missing is a quiet but profoundly sad film, thematically much like Anthony Hopkins’ upcoming Oscar contender, The Father, but it leans into the potential criminal aspects of both disappearances much more, while suggesting ironic parallels with the cruel psychological mysteries of Alzheimer’s. Unlike most amateur sleuths, Horsham has the further challenge of assembling clues from her disordered brain, before she can follow leads in the real world.

Director Aisling Walsh handles the two levels of the TV film’s mystery quite dexterously and sensitively. It is often frustrating watching the story unfold from Horsham’s perspective, because we are so acutely conscious of the blind-spots that plague her. As one of those “unreliable narrator” novels, adapting Elizabeth is Missing is a tricky proposition, but screenwriter Andrea Gibb pulls it off quite notably.