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Why don't we make war films that celebrate British courage any more? Screenwriter claims producers won't glorify UK soldiers fighting in modern conflicts because it's too politically sensitive

By TOM WILLIAMS

PUBLISHED: 23:57, 11 December 2013 | UPDATED: 01:42, 12 December 2013

 
 
 

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This Christmas, like many men up and down the land, I shall doubtless find myself settling down with a mince pie (or three) to enjoy a great British war film. 

It won’t matter to me which staple of the Christmas TV schedules it is: The Dam Busters, The Bridge On The River Kwai, Cockleshell Heroes, The Great Escape, Where Eagles Dare or The Guns Of Navarone.

Yes, I’m aware those last three were made with mostly American money, but so are many ‘British’ films today, and The Great Escape and the others celebrate British heroism and were dependent on British talent in front of and behind the camera.

Courage: Royal Marines are pictured during an operation to clear Taliban from Kajaki, Helmand Province in 2007. But why are film producers too scared to make a modern British war film?

Such films, mostly made in the Fifties and Sixties, brilliantly showcase the nobility, the camaraderie, the black humour, and the raw courage often displayed by the British Armed Forces in the most perilous of situations.

But then look at that list again. They’re all films set in World War II and were made nearly half a century ago. Have our forces stopped fighting wars since then? Of course not. So why aren’t the stories being told?

 

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As someone who writes screenplays, I’m forced to draw the conclusion that there is a disturbing tendency for the British film industry to ignore the heroic exploits of our brave men and women in uniform.

This question has been occupying my mind following the success of my first film, Chalet Girl, a romantic comedy starring Bill Nighy, Felicity Jones and Brooke Shields.

In its wake, I was considering what to write next. As I well know, there is always a market for romcoms, and as someone who needs to pay the rent, I decided to write some more.

But as any good writer knows, you also have to find a new gap in the market, and try to fill it. And what puzzled me — and continues to do so — is that there is a huge gap marked ‘Great British War Film’.

Silver screen: Geoffrey Horne, William Holden and Jack Hawkins in 1957's The Bridge Over the River Kwai. But films celebrating the courage of British forces are now deemed politically too hot to handle

Our finest hour: The film Battle Of Britain was a box office smash in 1970

Star studded: The cast of A Bridge Too Far from 1977 included Sean Connery, Gene Hackman, Edward Fox, Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, James Caan, Laurence Olivier and Robert Redford

In fact, hardly any films have been made about the many wars Britain has fought since 1945. There has been the odd TV drama, such as Tumbledown about the Falklands, or Occupation, about the invasion of Basra, which largely focused on what happened when the boys came home.

 

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And then there was a TV ‘comedy’ about a bomb disposal unit in Afghanistan called Bluestone 42, which many soldiers I know found in poor taste. 

There was also Bloody Sunday, in which the British Army is the bad guy.

When I rack my brains, the best and perhaps the only post-World War II Great British War Movie that I can think of is Who Dares Wins, starring the great and very recently late Lewis Collins, but that was a terrorist thriller and hardly a classic in the mould of The Dam Busters.

Screenwriter Tom Williams laments the demise of the great British war film

This huge gap was made even more apparent to me when I came across the story of what happened one day near an Afghan village called Kajaki, which I immediately knew I wanted to turn into a war film.

At 11am on September 6, 2006, a three-man patrol from 3 Para left an observation point on a ridge  overlooking the Kajaki Dam in Helmand Province.

As he hopped over a dried-out gully at the bottom of the ridge, Lance Corporal Stuart Hale stepped on a land mine, blowing off his right leg. 

A rescue party was hastily assembled and soon a dozen men were helping to clear a route across the minefield to a spot from where a helicopter could winch Hale to safety.

Then another mine went off. Then another. Then another.

In four hours, the lives of ten or more men were changed for ever. Three soldiers lost limbs, and several more were badly wounded.

Corporal Mark Wright, who  co-ordinated the rescue effort and kept his men’s spirits up until he drew his last breath, died on the helicopter ride back to Camp Bastion. He was posthumously awarded the George Cross for his efforts.

This was the kind of raw courage I had been wanting to write about. Undoubted heroism, extraordinary regimental spirit and life-saving sacrifice. The story didn’t hang upon questions of why we were in Afghanistan, who the enemy was, who was right and who was wrong.

After all, the mines detonated that day had been laid down 25 years earlier by Russian troops during their own invasion and occupation of the country in the Eighties. The enemy was invisible, inevitable and lethal. The enemy was war. 

Together with director Paul Katis, I researched the story in more detail. We read the Army’s own Board of Inquiry report, and the subsequent coroner’s inquest.

We met Bob and Gem Wright, Mark’s parents, and got their blessing for our endeavours. We met some of the personnel involved who have since left the Army, including the 3 Para Commanding Officer, who experienced the day’s horrendous events via radio back at Camp Bastion.

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Richard Attenborough pops his head out of a tunnel while Steve McQueen keeps watch in 1963's The Great Escape. Although many of the classic British war films were made with mostly American money, they still celebrate British heroism

And once provisional Ministry of Defence approval had been secured, we met or spoke to almost all of the still-serving soldiers who were involved in the attempted rescue that day. I wrote the script, although in fairness, it wrote itself.

So we had a script, a low budget and a tough but totally compelling story about modern warfare. Why don’t we make British war films any more? I was about to find out the answer.

The first people we approached were the various publicly funded subsidy organisations and  broadcasters who are the gatekeepers to the British film industry. They all said nice things but, politically, it was too hot for them to handle.

‘This is the kind of film that should be made, but we can’t put any money into it,’ they told us. This, in spite of the fact that politics didn’t come within a thousand miles of the story we were telling.

So we took it out to the industry — the distributors, sales agents and financiers that clog the narrow, noisy lanes of Soho in Central London. 

And we got the same reply. Very strong material. Very difficult material. Are people ready for a film about Afghanistan? Isn’t it a bit miserable? Have you thought about TV?

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a moan about why no one wants to finance my precious script. Perhaps the story isn’t as great as I think it is, or perhaps they had concerns about backing a little-known director.

I understand the realities of financing a movie, and I don’t begrudge a single person who said thanks, but no thanks. But there was something more going on here. Something systemic.

While the rest of the country has got behind the military over the past decade, with charities such as Help for Heroes and Walking With The Wounded — not to mention the time-honoured Poppy Appeal — achieving record levels of support and donations, the British film and television community seems to have looked the other way.

Yet if we had attempted to launch our project on the other side of the Atlantic, I am sure we would not have had such problems. Over the past decade, the U.S. has certainly not shied away from making films about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hollywood movies such as The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, Three Kings and Black Hawk Down have not only superbly portrayed these modern conflicts, they have also unearthed stories that a mainstream cinema audience  wants to see.

 

With films such as The Hurt Locker, Hollywood has refused to shy away from portraying modern conflicts

But in this country, and in spite of the huge commercial success of most of these movies,  the film industry still does not want to know. 

Is there a liberal sensitivity within my profession which deems any film showing British soldiers doing anything courageous or worthy of our admiration and gratitude to  be ‘not the kind of story we want  to tell’?

Has an institutional obsession with victimhood and ‘telling the other side’ led the industry to turn its back on those who defend  our freedoms?

I’m not saying that our military adventures over the past decade are without controversy, but surely we can at least depict the human side of these conflicts?

Instead, the industry sticks to the predictable holy trinity of Brit flicks: social-realist misery, escapist romantic comedies and Guy Ritchie-style gangster thrillers.

So now, in our efforts to be the first modern British war movie in more than 30 years, Kajaki has had to look outside the industry for finance.

The Ministry of Defence has supported us. The soldiers are behind us. The general public is behind us. But still the film industry looks the other way.

■ To help fund the film, visit indiegogo.com and search ‘Kajaki’.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2522278/Why-dont-make-war-films-celebrate-British-courage-more.html#ixzz2nEl3GTKg
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