Director Report Card: Danny Boyle (1989)

2. The Nightwatch

"Scout" aired on BBC2 on September 8th of 1987. Quite literally the next night after Danny Boyle officially became a director of film and television, his second "movie" also aired on the same network as part of the same program. "The Venus DeMilo Instead," about Irish school boys coping with the Troubles, ended up being the second of five "ScreenPlay" installments Boyle would direct. He contributed "The Hen House" in the fourth season, "Arise and Go Now" in the sixth season, and "Not Even God is Wise Enough" in the eighth and final season. "The Venus DeMilo Instead" appears to have been available for rent on British streaming services at one point – it's not anymore – but Boyle's other "ScreenPlay" episodes, as far as I can tell, have remained elusive in the years since they aired. This is true for a lot of his early TV work. The two episodes of "Inspector Morse" he directed and "Mr. Wroe's Virgins," a four episode series about nuns that he oversaw, can currently be found on BritBox and Tubi. 

Otherwise? "Monkeys," an intriguing sounding television movie about John DeLorean from 1989, doesn't appear to have ever been released. "For the Greater Good," a 1991 BBC mini-series about the aftermath of World War II, seems to pop up in various places from time to time. I couldn't find it as of this writing. Among the obscure projects from this stage of Boyle's career, I was able to locate "The Nightwatch." That's a late night hour-long movie, also about the Troubles and also made for the BBC, that Boyle also directed in 1989. Some helpful soul uploaded it to that sketchy Russian YouTube clone that is frequently a godsend for those seeking movies totally unavailable through any official channels. The video quality is a bit crunchy and there's a distracting time strip running along the top of the whole time. However, for pedantic film nerds like me who try to get as close to 100% on a director's Letterboxd page as possible, this hard-to-find presentation can at least be observed. 

Not that I was able to understand "The Nightwatch" much anyway. And not only because of the lack of subtitles for all the distinct elocution going on. The film is loosely inspired by the Littlejohn affair. That is, as far as I can tell from the kind of convoluted Wikipedia page, an incident that occurred in 1973. Brothers Kenneth and Keith Littlejohn, two British expats with a long history of criminal behavior, pulled off the then-biggest bank robbery in Dublin history. While being held for trial, Kenneth claimed to have been an English double agent in the Official Irish Republican Army the entire time, committing all his crimes on behalf of the British crown to destabilize the Irish rebellion. The story gets more bizarre from there, as the brothers made a daring escape from prison and went on the run, with Kenneth eventually being arrested while in his underwear. I am absolutely certain that I do not have enough of a grasp on the history of the British/Irish conflict to truly understand all the nuances of these events. However, I will say that it sounds like a pretty compelling premise for a movie. 

Unfortunately, "The Nightwatch" seems to operate with the assumption that the viewer is familiar with this true story while also understanding that a British made-for-TV movie in the late eighties certainly did not have the budget necessary to accurately portray such a tale. Instead, it heavily fictionalizes Kenneth Littlejohn's story as practically a chamber drama. It follows bank robber and MI6 asset David Smallman as he busts his brother out of prison in Northern Ireland. They relocate to Amsterdam. Four years later, Smallman is recruited by the crown again on behalf of a pair of American businessmen planning some kind of illegal activity. Smallman reassembles his band of former partners-in-crime under the pretense of them joining the operation. However, following a night of debauchery in the Dutch city, Smallman reveals that he has a far more personal matter to resolve.

I didn't know any of the above information about the true story that inspired "The Nightwatch" when I sat down to watch it. Yes, I was acting like your typical ignorant American, assuming that homework was not required to understand an obscure TV movie from 1989. This meant I was very confused almost the entire hour I was watching the film, having little familiarity with the political turmoil of the Troubles and the specific historical affair being referenced here. From the perspective of my dim, thoroughly mid-Atlantic eyes, "The Nightwatch" is almost entirely an hour of men with difficult Irish accents having conversations inside restaurants, hotel rooms, or night clubs. I would say a good seventy percent of the runtime is devoted to interior scenes, of the cast seated around a table. They argue and bicker about vague and secret plans. Sometimes they pull guns and threaten one another. Most often, they sneer hardboiled dialogue laced with resentments over long since passed events and battles. 

That "The Nightwatch" is largely devoted to a stage play-like sequence of events, of people talking about things that happened, is frustrating for another reason. The film resembles a well-known structure. Namely, any number of previous narratives about putting together a team of rough and tumble guys to seek out an objective of debatable morality. I always love a good "men on a mission" movie. Of course, "The Nightwatch" decidedly is not that kind of story. It starts and stops at the "putting together a team" step of this familiar formula. I don't think we see Smallman and the band of scumbags he gets tangled up never actually set out on their mission only because the BBC clearly didn't have the money for it. This is a movie, partially anyway, about frustration. It is purposely an extended first act. These guys hate each other and wouldn't make a good team anyway. The idea, I suspect, is to subvert expectations by showing that a group of hardened criminals are exactly the kind of people who don't play well with others. 

It's an interesting idea but that doesn't mean it's a pleasant one to watch. "The Nightwatch" produces an overall mood of cruelty and bitterness. Leslie Grantham plays Smallman as someone who is constantly scowling and griping. James Cosmo, as the first associate recruited for the job, plays a character who is a dead-eyed, racist psychopath that has no problem reminding others of the violent acts he has performed in the past and has no qualms about performing in the future. Tony Doyle as the second recruit is more outwardly obnoxious and confrontational. Don Fellows is the American businessman who regales the others with his stories of sexually abusing women in Vietnam. Once the gang gets together, they visit a brothel and beat a homeless man in an alleyway. These are deeply terrible people and spending time with them is not exactly rewarding, interesting, or compelling. 

I do think there is a point here. Smallman's MI6 recruiter is a pathetic figure, an alcoholic who whines and moans at the agent he's watching over more like he's an old drinking buddy than a spy in his employ. This is not an exciting call to adventure for the protagonist but a humiliating obligation. The final act takes place in a brothel, where Smallman begins to rant to a prostitute about power and control while also humiliating and threatening her. That is where the heart of the movie is, I think. This is a story about power and control, about a desperate need to reclaim power from the system that controls. "The Nightwatch" has neither the runtime nor the interest to fully explore these ideas. It ends rather abruptly not long after this thematically establishing moment. In the espionage genre, where spies are usually action heroes, a film that considers how assets are at the beck-and-call of their masters, in a twisted power play that recalls the same systems of control that direct international affairs, is an interesting approach. 

However, I'll say this much about "The Nightwatch:" You can tell Danny Boyle directed it. Since I'm currently unable to see the missing films between "Scout" and this one, I can only speculate on how it happened. However, the director had definitely developed his own style by this point. New Wave music plays throughout the film, with notable needle drops from the Art of Noise and The Cure. (Not to mention a cameo from the memorably bizarre video for New Order's "True Faith.") A few times, these musical choices are paired with quickly edited montages. The descent into depravity that occurs before the final third, where our characters explore the Amsterdam red light district while becoming more unhinged, is easily the highlight of the film. If only because it allows some of the nervous energy, confined to the tight interiors for most of the runtime, a release. 

By the way, here in reality, the Official IRA would disavow the Littlejohn brothers as ever being members of their outfit, calling some of the details of their story into question. Kenneth would serve six years in prison for another bank robbery in 1981. The current whereabouts of the notorious figure doesn't seem to be public knowledge and I doubt we'll know all the details of his story for a long time. "The Nightwatch" has a much more permanent, far more downbeat ending, unsurprisingly. The true story is probably a good degree more interesting than this fictionalized account, which is clearly compromised by a lack of budget and resources and a decision to play too many of its details close to its chest. Not the best work of the burgeoning filmmaker behind it, though it does present some interesting – if ultimately unfulfilled – opportunities. [Grade: C-]