Remember, Remember (1985)

D. Tom Warmby
Colour


Maybe the casting notes got muddled up, or maybe the actors names were fed into a tombola and the roles were allocated by simple chance. Or perhaps this was the director’s attempt to take something that had ‘bog-standard thriller’ stamped right the way through it, and turn it into a film slightly more interesting. As let’s be fair, if this film was cast the way it should be cast, there’s no way that this blog would give it a moment’s glance. It would just be another generic 80s British thriller with tough cops and brassy birds, all predictably culminating in a shoot-out in the building site that was then the London Docklands. It would have shown up in video stores with scowling men on the front cover, posing in front of explosions. Okay, that’s almost exactly how the cover appeared when it was leaked out like a bad smell, but if you took a moment to read the blurb then you’d  have realised it was pushing with all its might against its assigned box.


‘Remember, Remember’ is a duel between two complete opposites. In our corner we have the suave, sexy, super-agent who is working for British interests. In the other we have the asexual, sinister foreign saboteur, looking to succeed where Guy Fawkes failed and blow up The Houses of Parliament. It’s a tense race against time, a high-wire game of guns and explosions which only one man can win. And if I told you that our two leads were Donald Pleasence and Martin Shaw, you’d know exactly who was playing whom. It’s so obvious, scribble the script down on the back of an envelope, shoot it in the most formulaic style possible and consider the job done. Next!


But, of course, as you’ve no doubt guessed by now, Martin Shaw is here cast as the villain and Donald Pleasence is the charming and handsome good guy.


How this happened I have no idea (the film is too obscure to have any behind the scenes featurettes). Maybe Shaw thought that the hero as written was too close to Brodie in ‘The Professionals’, perhaps this was his attempt to stretch his acting muscles. Clearly he enjoying himself, adding a demonic glow to his eyes and speaking every line with vague Germanic relish. He’s entertaining in a part which is unlike anything else he’s ever played.


Imagine though, waking up one morning and looking like Donald Pleasence – bald, tubby and now over the hill, yet cast as a charismatic sex symbol. He must have danced his way to the set each and every morning. And to be fair he does mostly sell it, there’s an aura to him, an invincibility, a definite twinkle. He can almost pass as man of action with a plan for every eventuality. It nearly works. The place it falls apart is in his desirability to the opposite sex. No matter how good an actor (and Donald Pleasence was a really good actor), he cannot sell the notion that he is cat-nip to the ladies. It seems incredible unlikely that he and the svelte and lovely Fiona Fullerton would be in an intense on/off relationship; it’s equally absurd that sexy foreign spy, the tantalising Glynis Barber, would lick her lips so excitedly in his presence and change sides to be with him; just as the notion that busty and perky Nicola Bryant would willingly play his Moneypenny and flirt so outrageously is really rather odd and disturbing. Even the most generously minded Donald Pleasence fan will think it looks ridiculous, the kind of thing that happens to Woody Allen in later Woody Allen films, but to no one else. Of course Pleasence enjoys himself, it must be highly flattering to him, but there’s nothing he can do to make himself sexier. If bald, overweight and aging men were actually considered the height of attractiveness, Eric Pickles would be one of the biggest stars in the world right now. They’re not and he isn’t.


And so we have a film which should be dull, and to be honest often is dull, but is enlivened by the casting. The sad problem is that a pedestrian script and bog-standard action scenes cannot be spruced up no matter how ludicrous your leading man. It’s well worth watching just for the performances, but don’t expect any more depth than one would associate with the modern day straight to video equivalent – the Vinnie Jones film.


Pleasence and Shaw are both great: Shaw enjoying his time as a Blofeld knock-off; Pleasence delighted not to be doing Blofeld again. And if you’re wondering who the actress playing Martin Shaw’s ultra-loyal secretary is – then, yes, that is John Hurt in drag. Inspiration did strike more than once while making this film then, but if only it had been more fulsome.