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For Queen and Country was one of a wave of directorial debuts by
scriptwriters in the heady days of the mid-1980s British film boom. Martin
Stellman had previously collaborated on the scripts for Quadrophenia (d. Franc
Roddam, 1979) and Babylon (d. Franco Rosso, 1980). But it was his successful
thriller Defence of the Realm (d. David Drury, 1985) that won him the backing of
then-fledgling production company Working Title for his first directorial project.
Stellman had been disappointed with Defence of the Realm, considering it
'polite' and 'cool', and blaming David Puttnam's influence. With For Queen and
Country, he was determined to make a harder-edged piece. He worked on the script
with Trix Worrell, who at the time was studying at the National Film and
Television School and who was, like the protagonist Reuben, an ex-soldier born
in St Lucia.
Stellman and Worrell clearly had Tottenham's Broadwater Farm riots of 1985 in
mind as they wrote. Making Reuben a Falklands veteran offered another layer of
cruel irony to their class-war parable; Reuben's efforts as a soldier help keep
in power the very government which robs him of his citizenship (via the 1981
British Nationality Act), and which represents interests detrimental to his
own.
"This is war," says Rueben's friend Lynford - but not the kind of war Reuben
has been trained for. A council estate in London offers nothing so clear as the
distinction between 'Argies' and 'Paras'. Loyalties are splintered; identities
are slippery. Yuppie criminal Colin does business with the police; easy-going
Lynford ends up a killer. Ex-army, ex-British Rueben - doubly bereft of
allegiance - is adrift in what he had considered his own society. His loyalty to
best friend Fish is ferocious because it exists in a vacuum; there is nothing
else left to be loyal to.
Keith Shuaib
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1. Return home (3:35)
Production stills
