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Bookmark this pageBoy Soldier (1986)
Director: Karl Francis
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
When Wil Thomas, tired of unemployment and a nagging mother, enlists in a Welsh army regiment for a stretch in Belfast, he makes friends, falls in love, and shapes up as an efficient cog in the military machine. Suddenly, however, there's a shooting, and Wil is imprisoned for murder. The complex but lucid account of his political education is performed partly in Welsh, no nationalist gimmick but a dramatically essential device. For the boy's resort to his native tongue not only signifies his growing solidarity with the 'enemy'; it also serves as a vital strategy of self-defence in his war with the English officers. The occasionally needless fragmentation of the narrative at times weakens the film's emotional punch, while the almost universal depiction of Wil's would-be moral guardians as corrupt and hypocritical brutes might seem overemphatic. But it's a brave, sincere and intelligent movie, forcefully grasping a thorny subject all too often handled with kid gloves.Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Karl Francis
Producer: Karl Francis, Hayden Pearce
Cast: Richard Lynch, Bernard Latham, Dafydd Hywel, James Donnelly, WJ Phillips, Timothy Lyn, Robert Pugh full cast
Duration: 100 mins
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