Last Orders

Graham Swift's meditative, Booker Prize-winning novel, with its story told through multiple interior monologues, should have been a tough one to adapt for the screen. But writer/director Fred Schepisi has done a sterling job with the tricky material, assembling a dream cast to flesh out this deceptively simple, 1980s-set tale of four friends - Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Tom Courtenay, David Hemmings, all on peak form - who travel from London to Margate to scatter the ashes of a fifth (Michael Caine, seen in intelligently interwoven flashback). Not only is Last Orders a touching and perceptive drama about the war generation and something of a pocket guide to 40 years of British screen acting (Helen Mirren also features as Caine's long-suffering wife), it's also a British road movie about friendship, deceit and loss. Moving and funny, it shows south-east England in a green and pleasant light - scenes in Canterbury Cathedral and at the Chatham war memorial have a particular sense of place. Perhaps it took an outsider's eye - Schepisi is Australian - to capture the indomitable spirit and the absurd brave face of this island and its islanders.