Borstal Boy

CinemaSerfJan 2025

3.5

When Brendan Behan (Shawn Hatosy) arrives in Liverpool with a bag full of explosives amidst WWII, he's promptly caught and sent to a youth detention facility in Norfolk. It's run by a fair and open-minded warden (Michael York) who advises his inmates to behave themselves and all will be fine. That's easier said than done, though, as this confirmed Irish republican is not going to naturally fit in with his cohorts. One exception might be navy man Charlie Milwall (Danny Dyer) with whom he becomes quite thick. What now ensues combines a frequently toxic mix of politics, bullying and fluid sexuality with their determination to escape and a degree of humanity and some dark, wartime, humour as the coming-of-age genre takes on a different, less predictable, direction. There are gay undertones, but they are not laboured as the story depicts a broader group of lads who are lost, abandoned by family and society and rudderless - and an engaging rapport between Hatosy and Dyer emerges helping to illustrate that not everyone here knows what the war is for or, indeed, is fighting the same one. It's gritty and the dialogue is honest and ripe without becoming overwhelmingly aggressive or repetitive and by the close these two men came across as decent and honourable. Worth a watch.