This is How Movies Should Be Made

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It's 1914. John Kipling (Daniel Radcliffe) volunteers for the Navy but is rejected for poor eyesight. His famous writer father Rudyard Kipling (David Haig) is a war hawk. Rudyard eagerly pulls strings to get him into the Army which angers his beloved sister Elsie (Carey Mulligan). He leads a platoon into battle and goes MIA. Rudyard and his wife (Kim Cattrall) go in search for their missing son.Rudyard Kipling is a fascinating war hawk. David Haig gives a brilliant performance. Radcliffe and Mulligan do good work. I really like the first half. The movie stops being interesting after Jack goes missing. The story drags and ultimately doesn't have a good climax. Jack going over the top is probably a much better climax. The search doesn't have enough drama.

David Haig wrote and starred as Rudyard Kipling in 'My Boy Jack', a drama about the brief life of John Kipling, who went to war despite his appalling eyesight and died in the trenches as a teenager.Jack is played by Daniel Radcliffe, who carried all the baggage of being better known as Harry Potter - however his performance is understated, moving, and well crafted. He also has a resemblance to Haig which makes it all the more convincing that they are father and son.The real revelation of this drama though is the casting of Kim Cattrall, Sex and the City's Samantha Jones, as Jack's mother - she is brilliant and this film proves she really can act.The film presents the realities of war without sentiment, and also does justice to the reputation and work of Kipling. Excellent viewing.

My Boy Jack, the title taken from Kipling's poem of the same name, tells the story of Rudyard Kipling and his role as vehement propagandist for England's entrance into WWI, and Rudyard Kipling as the father who wants his son to live up to his ideals of the patriotic Englishman.The show belongs to Haig, who not only wrote the play, but bears an uncanny resemblance to Rudyard. Haig becomes Kipling, from the pulpit pounding jingoist, to the polite and mannerly English gentleman. He captures Kipling, at least in a way that we all imagine a person gung-ho about encouraging his own country to enter into a war would be like. Young Daniel Radcliff, looking pale and gaunt, does a very good job of eliciting sympathy for a boy who just can't win. He wants to get out of the house and be his own person, while also living up to his dad's expectations (historically, the two were very close). Yet his vision problems present a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Not to be deterred, Kipling uses his influence to slip his son into the army, and to his horror learns that only two weeks after Jack departs for France, he is killed. And worse, he dies in the rain, having lost his glasses and unable to see. The very problem that everyone warned Kipling about.Kim Catrell does well as the long-suffering Mrs. Kipling, with Carey Mulligan as Elsie and Julian Wadham rounding out the main cast with very good performances as Kipling's daughter and King George V respectfully.Now, dramas based on historical people can often fall into the Oliver Stone technique of murdering history to drive home a point. Haig avoids this. Sure, if you think Kipling was just one more evil, racist imperialist huffing and puffing for war, then you may think this portrayal to be too sympathetic. If you are a fan of Kipling, and have learned to overlook any shortcomings on the pretense that we all are less than perfect, you may find it to be a bit judgmental against Kipling.But for my money, it was a good balance. For those who are puzzled at the idea that this 'war propagandist' could at the same time be a loving father - well, that's the point. Too often we slip into the tendency of looking at those who lived in past times as one dimensional cardboard cut outs. We zero in on their flaws, or worse, where they disagree with our modern stances. People cease to be people. They become convenient ways to win an argument.But here, Haig reminds us that even Kipling, who for some is one of the incarnations of all the worst of a country filled with the racist imperialist propagandist (a view I don't hold), was a person - like us. He is not the bloodthirsty tyrant, browbeating his son into a hopeless doom. He loved his son. His son loved him. He did what he thought was right in the way he thought best. And when he hears of his son's loss, we feel his tortured pain. We weep with him. We sympathize as he and his wife try, in their own ways, to come to grips with this loss of losses. We realize that he is no longer that cardboard cut out - but a real human being. And that makes this a keeper.One more thing. Young Jack's death scene. War movies have a tough time bringing true sadness out of a viewer. Shock, pride, that feeling of unbelief at the suffering of humanity, yes - but seldom true sadness. That's because we know it's a war movie and people will die. But for my money, Radcliff, Haig and the rest of the actors, and the editors, did about as good a job showing poor Jack's final moments as any war movie death scene I have witnessed. My wife was bawling her eyes out, and I must admit, I got teary eyed (a very, very rare occurrence). Maybe it was a bit too deliberately emotional, but if so, only because all involved did a magnificent job, all the way to King George's own remorse set in final juxtaposition to Kipling's, and Kipling's final poetic tribute to Jack. As the king tries to explain how finding his dead son still warm brings comfort, to a man who would never again see the body of his own boy Jack, the tense remorsefulness almost brings the scene to a halt. All Kipling can do is wax poetic. And never has that poem sounded so painful, yet so proud. If you want a movie all about how ignorant hyper-patriots butcher the innocent and push even their loved ones to their deaths while wrapping themselves in the flag, then this movie will disappoint. But My Boy Jack is a good reminder to a world that spends much of its time tearing down anyone with whom we disagree, and often extending this courtesy to people who lived many ages ago, that those being torn down are and were people. Think what you will, they laugh and cry, rejoice and agonize just like us. And in trying to make that point, My Boy Jack is about as good as any modern attempts have been. Definitely recommended.

I watched My Boy Jack last night on U.S. Masterpiece Theatre. I appreciated not only the timeliness of the subject, but the tender story of the short life of John "Jack" Kipling, the son of poet Rudyard Kipling. Jack is played by Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame and it is a role perfectly suited to his age. Jack is a young man seeking his independence. Caught up in the patriotic fervor of his friends and neighbors going off to the war known as The Great War, Jack also wants to serve. His problem is that he has terrible eyesight and cannot get into any branch of the service until his renown father steps in to assist. David Haig wrote My Boy Jack as a play in 1997 and portrayed Rudyard Kipling on stage and again in this television film. He did an outstanding job on both fronts and it is uncanny how much he resembles Kipling. His depiction of Kipling is in keeping with a well to do man of the early 20th century - stoic in matters of war, interested in his family but detached emotionally. Rudyard encourages Jack to get into the war and finds him a commissioned position in the Army leaving Rudyard's wife and daughter at a loss to understand why. Jack overcomes his vision problems and succeeds at a boot camp that hastily prepares the next crop of men for war. His social status grants him the position of Lieutenant and as an officer he commands a troop that is sent to France. Ironically, as Jack struggles to become his own man, he must get his father's written permission to ship out to France as he is just shy of the legal age of 18. I am astounded by the chaos and devastation that is relayed during war briefings that Rudyard attends. Casualty statistics are given and they are unbelievable – literally thousands die in one battle, often in one day. World War I was a gruesome war in so many ways but especially so because these soldiers were at a crossroads, fighting with traditional tactics in the face of modern weaponry that cut them to ribbons. There is no doubt that in order to have war you need to have three types of people in your service, those who make a career of it, those who romanticize the cause and their obligation, and those who seek to escape. Jack, as with many young men, comprises both the second and third types. He has left his boyhood and his family to become a man. He is aware of the long odds of surviving the war despite his father assuring him that he would come through it. He is honor bound to serve his King and country.And so young Jack, celebrates his eighteenth birthday in France, bravely leads his troop into battle and tragically dies. Declared to be missing in action, his family searches for him to no avail and at last, piece together Jack's final hours through the stories of surviving soldiers who were there. His parents are devastated and Rudyard, looking for comfort, says that Jack would not have felt pain and so he was lucky. In response, Jack's mother movingly encapsulates Jack's death saying that there is nothing lucky about dying alone in the rain. My heart goes out to all families who have endured such loss. The story of Jack Kipling tells of one of the millions of sons who have died at war, all equally important to those who loved them and far less important to those who view them as expendable. Jack's body was not recovered by his family. His father died nearly twenty years later as his beloved country was on the brink of World War II.