Tumbledown arrived on the screens in the late 1980s under a lot of controversy. The then Tory government and its supporters of the press were critical of the movie and its supposedly anti war message.
They were especially venomous as to how true this was. Especially after the BBC mini series The Monocled Mutineer a few years earlier.
Given no true story is entirely accurate. The BBC opted to use the term drama documentary.
Tumbledown was based on the memoirs of Lieutenant Robert Lawrence MC. He was supportive of the television movie and made many appearances to promote the realism it displayed.
Lawrence (Colin Firth) was an officer of the Scots Guards who got injured in the Battle of Mount Tumbledown during the Falklands war.
He was shot in the head and left paralysed on his left side. As he rehabilitates Lawrence encounters a lot of indifference. The disabled soldiers were seen as an embarrassment.
The structure of the film has Lawrence and fellow soldier Hugh MacKessac (Paul Rhys) visiting the Stubbs family where they recall their military experiences. Both men are damaged, Lawrence suffering from both mental and physical trauma.
Lawrence does not come across as sympathetic. He brutally kills a young Argentinian soldier and later shouts that this is fun before he is wounded. The real Lawrence claimed this actually happened.
It is not a political film. Soldiers later injured in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars could justifiably argue that they were even more let down by their governments.
Tumbledown suffers from some low budget scenes. It was made at a time when the BBC were taking their first tentative steps into movies for cinema.
Tumbledown is not entirely cinematic, it cannot be compared with films such as Platoon.
It does give an unflinching and unsympathetic account of Lawrence's experiences.
They were especially venomous as to how true this was. Especially after the BBC mini series The Monocled Mutineer a few years earlier.
Given no true story is entirely accurate. The BBC opted to use the term drama documentary.
Tumbledown was based on the memoirs of Lieutenant Robert Lawrence MC. He was supportive of the television movie and made many appearances to promote the realism it displayed.
Lawrence (Colin Firth) was an officer of the Scots Guards who got injured in the Battle of Mount Tumbledown during the Falklands war.
He was shot in the head and left paralysed on his left side. As he rehabilitates Lawrence encounters a lot of indifference. The disabled soldiers were seen as an embarrassment.
The structure of the film has Lawrence and fellow soldier Hugh MacKessac (Paul Rhys) visiting the Stubbs family where they recall their military experiences. Both men are damaged, Lawrence suffering from both mental and physical trauma.
Lawrence does not come across as sympathetic. He brutally kills a young Argentinian soldier and later shouts that this is fun before he is wounded. The real Lawrence claimed this actually happened.
It is not a political film. Soldiers later injured in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars could justifiably argue that they were even more let down by their governments.
Tumbledown suffers from some low budget scenes. It was made at a time when the BBC were taking their first tentative steps into movies for cinema.
Tumbledown is not entirely cinematic, it cannot be compared with films such as Platoon.
It does give an unflinching and unsympathetic account of Lawrence's experiences.