My Policeman Book and movie. More than Harry Styles’s Butt. My Policeman is now available to stream on Amazon Prime Video, starring Harry Styles, Emma Corrin and David Dawson.
But is it worth your time? This post will give you an in-depth look at the film, breaking down its performances, plot, and overall impact. Whether you’re a die-hard Harry Styles fan or just looking for your next streaming pick, I’ll help you decide if “My Policeman” is worth your time.
About “My Policeman”
My Policeman is a new Amazon Prime original movie starring Harry Styles, Emma Corrin (best known as Princess Diana in the Netflix show the crown) and David Dawson.
With a supporting cast of Gina Mckee (Most known from the movie Notting Hill, who played Hugh Grant’s best friend) Linus Roache and Ruper Everett (His most famous movie is when he played Julia Roberts’ best friend in the 90’s Rom-Com “My best friend wedding” he’s an openly gay actor, a few from the ’90s)
Academy Nominated for the movie Philadelphia, Ron Nyswaner wrote the screenplay, adapted from the 2012 book romance novel written by Bethan Roberts.
She wasn’t involved in the making of the screenplay or the movie.
She mentioned in an interview for Vogue magazine, “I’m not involved in the film adaptation in any official capacity, but the producers, Berlanti Productions and Independent Films, have been very lovely and have involved me in all sorts of ways.
The incredible [producer] Robbie Rogers, whose championing of the novel goes back to when it was first published, met me way back in 2013 to discuss potentially adapting it. He and his husband, Greg Berlanti, then worked tirelessly to get the funding for the film.
The super-talented scriptwriter, Ron Nyswaner, came to see me in Brighton a year or so later to discuss the novel and the script. I gave him a tour of the book’s locations—we walked for hours!—and we got on famously.
From what I understand, taking ten years to reach the screen is not at all unusual…and it’s been a lovely thing, to have this little bit of hope bubbling away in the background for years. When things weren’t going so well for my writing, I would daydream that Robbie might call me with some amazing news, even though everyone told me only 1% of optioned novels actually make it to the screen. That this actually happened is still slightly difficult to believe.”
The movie was directed by Michael Grandage, a theatre director – Tony Award winner for the play Red and nominated for The cripple of Inishmaan and Frost/Nixon.
Lawrence Oliver, winner of the plays Caligula and King Lear. It is really rear when an outstanding theatre director can make a great career in film.
There are plenty of great filmmakers that become good theatre directors thou. Michael had only one movie previous to “My Policeman,” and probably no one saw it or heard about it (Genius).
Harry Styles
Amazon Studios announced in 2020 that they would produce the movie, and it will be released to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
The truth is that the film probably would be lost in the immense movie library of Amazon, and only members of the LGBTQ would have known about My Policeman.
Still, everything changed for this project the moment Harry Styles was announced to be the lead man of the film. And I will say everything, including the life of the book author Bethan Roberts; the book was immediately published in the USA and became a best seller.
The whole Styles fandom, including the One Direction fandom, went crazy about the project. And you may ask how in hell Harry Styles was cast in a gay movie and why?
In an interview for Deadline, Director Michael Grandage said: The script was swishing around CAA, and so one day, we got this curious call. It was Harry’s agent at CAA.
He said: ”Just so you know, we shared this script with Harry, and he has responded to the material and would love to meet you.” Then they did that lovely thing of going: ‘If that’s okay.’ At the time, Dunkirk was just out, and he’d been wrapping on Don’t Worry Darling.
I met with Harry at my offices in London, at the top of one of the theatres in the West End.
I was astonished. He’d read the novels, which I would have expected, but sometimes don’t over-expect. But the bit that had easily astonished me was he’d read the screenplay so many times, clearly numerous times, because he was able to quote quite a lot of the material that didn’t even involve the character of Tom, which shows an astonishing level of understanding.
He was briefed and prepared with a real understanding of both the novel and the screenplay that I thought: I don’t understand why I wouldn’t do this, actually. I don’t understand why I wouldn’t want to go here.
‘You are charismatic; you have proved that you want to be on screen, your want to carry on doing film work; you are intelligent and up for discussion. I think we’ve got to try and make it a reality.’ It was very, very straightforward once we got him. I think we did then decide to cast the other two [young] actors first and then find the older actors to respond to the younger cast.
Harry Styles mentioned in an interview that he was drawn by the material and its relevant source. I believe some part of that is true; the other part is, knowing how Hollywood works, they want to make Harry Styles the biggest star in the world to dominate music and film and make tons of money on the way.
However isn’t going to be easy for CAA to get Harry to start in high-profile dramas, except if the director is unknown or relatively new and the production is struggling to get financed; then comes someone like Harry Styles, and it is just the best option because it is a good business idea.
Then either they convinced themselves artistically was the best option or they lied to themselves until they believed it.
Harry is professional, dedicated and has an incredible work ethic, and he will bring this to his acting career. Is he a good actor? Is he meant to be an actor or only a musician? I believe everyone can act. But not everyone can be great.
To be great, you must have talent, training and sensibility. A lot of training.
Here is an article I found online and think is really on point; Harry isn’t bad; he doesn’t have training. And his biggest weakness (funny enough) is his voice. His speaking voice. Not his beautiful singing voice. The article is by Oli Wesh for the blog Polygon. “Styles lacks one very important part of an actor’s skill set, which wasn’t that evident in Dunkirk but is painfully exposed in his two recent films. He’s just not very good at speaking.
It’s not that he’s unclear or hard to comprehend. Quite the opposite. He has a curiously deliberate, childlike cadence, where every syllable seems to carry the same weight.
He sounds for all the world like a 12-year-old reading aloud in class. His speech pattern is compounded by his northwestern English accent (he grew up in Cheshire, south of Manchester), with its drawn-out vowel sounds.
It’s a clumsy way of speaking, and it leads to some unintentionally funny line readings — often at the worst possible moments when he’s working hardest emotionally. In a crucial scene in My Policeman, he rounds on Marion, who is getting to the truth of his relationship with Patrick, and shouts, “You’ve got a dirty mind!” It somehow comes out petulant and camp, and it drew a big, derisive laugh from the audience in the screening I attended.
This could be the real reason viewers of Don’t Worry Darling struggled to understand what accent he was going for when it’s just his natural accent. No speech seems to sound entirely natural coming out of Styles’ mouth. It’s as if he’s learning to talk from first principles. Every line sounds like a line.
This might seem like a fatal flaw for an actor, but verbal cadence is a skill that can be taught far more quickly than holding the camera’s gaze or the audience’s sympathy. Styles can do both of those things better than many others in the field. With work — and through collaborations with directors who can get him to relax and be himself, as Nolan did — he could be a movie star yet.
Harry Styles is for sure handsome and desirable and suits all this for Tom, the character he plays in My Policeman.
There was a lot of hype about the sex scenes and all, to get publicity obviously, but the “sex scenes” look and feel, as they say it plenty of times, chorograph and mostly focus on Styles close-ups as he climaxes.
It was said that Tom’s character is bisexual, but he doesn’t seem to enjoy sex with his wife; it’s merely a chore he has to do. So if you intend to watch Harry Styles having hot intimacy with a man or woman, you will be disappointed. And I mean, I don’t care about it, but they tried to explode that on publicity.
My Policeman Plot
In Amazon Prime Video this is the synopsis of the film: A tale of forbidden romance and changing social conventions, My Policeman follows the relationships between three people—policeman Tom (Harry Styles/Linus Roache), teacher Marion (Emma Corrin/Gina McKee) and museum curator Patrick (David Dawson/Rupert Everett)—and their emotional journey spanning decades.
The story in the 1950s is told in flashbacks. Very similar to how “the bridge of madison county the Movie”, is set. Then as in the “bridge…” the story is told through the point of view of a diary.
It is kind of Marion’s point of view at the beginning, then the dairy (Patrick) and then a mix between the two of them. We never see the point of view of Tom (Styles), which was extremely important.
I guess because the title is “My Policeman” and not “Policeman,” the object of desire and possession is Tom, and that’s why they don’t care about his point of view.
He is just a “confused” hunk. Not depth or understanding or where he comes from.
Is it worth watching?
and what are my thoughts
There are not many LGBTQ+ mainstream movies out there, only for that reason, I say watch it to support the movie, and maybe that will give the courage to studios to make more movies with LGBTQ+ characters.
A history lesson just for the fact that it touches the subject of homosexuality being illegal in the UK in the 1950s is really important to review those times, so we don’t take for granted what we have now.
The cinematography by Ben Davis, best known as a cinematographer of action movies and various Marvel movies, including The Eternals where Harry Styles has a small cameo. Ben’s most beautiful works come from the movie “ Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”.
In My Policeman, he achieves great shots, but I feel he could have explored more artistic, paint-wise choices throughout the film, especially because art has a huge part in the film.
The music was scored by Steven Price, the Oscar-winning musician for the movie Gravity. The score suites beautifully the film and carry the emotion without being extra mellow or cheesy. I think Price could have a better theme, that stays in the heart of the audience.
Can you imagine Brokeback Mountain without the beautiful theme “The wings”?
Emma Corrin is superb. She is heading to be one of the biggest stars in Hollywood right beside Florence Pugh (funny enough, both of them are Harry Styles scene partners).
Emma was nominated for an Emmy for her role as Princess Diana in the Netflix show The Crown. She is superb in the show. She comes from theatre background and has intense training. She isn’t just beautiful, she has a strong presence, and the camera loves her.
It is hard not to compare to the incredible performance that Michele Williams did on Brokeback Mountain, but it is not Emma’s fault that Williams’s performance was better. Marion, Emma’s character in My policeman, is really bad writing.
Here it is the bad things, and hopes this doesn’t stop to watch the film. The major problem with the film (besides Styles’s voice) is the story. And it is not the film’s fault is the story.
Brokeback Mountain was a short story and had some much depth on those few pages, that when they adapted the script (which won the Oscar, and it is one of the most beautiful scripts ever written) Dianna Ossana and Larry McMutry had much to explore in the story and the characters.
In My Policeman, as I said before, the story is told through a diary flashback. That’s how Marion understands the “love” between these two men. In the end, it is just silly. Is she getting her revenge? Here now, take care of this sick old man. Or is she giving Tom the opportunity to be with the man of his life? And it’s top of everything; they have Harry Styles kissing the old man. Like What?
Marion’s character is written in a line of modern women who go to school and have a career but have close-minded thoughts about homosexuality. Does she really love Tom and not want to be left behind?
The biggest question that was unanswered is What happened all these years between Marion and Tom after the 1950s incident. What kind of life did they live? Why did she stay with Tom out of pity? She says at the end, “I want to live my life, travel,” and I was like, What?… What? Why you didn’t?
Oh right! we don’t know because you didn’t tell us. Now I have to assume you stayed with a man you don’t love, who clearly is homosexual, just because…
There are no steaks for her to stay in. In Bridge of Madison country or Broback Mountain, they have kids; they stay together for the kids. I was so pissed with Marion’s choices because it wasn’t logical with the character they tried to portray.
We know nothing about Tom except that he likes the ocean, loves to walk his dog by the ocean, and was a policeman (what he did after he was fired, we don’t know).
He is uneducated, but he wants to learn, and he is very childish (which I don’t know if that’s Styles’ interpretation of Tom), which makes it even creepier that he is with a way older man.
Is Patrick grooming Tom to get to having him in bed? That’s not clear because we don’t know anything about Tom. And what happened to Patrick after he was released from prison?
I mean, the only thing we know is that he is an old, sick man that was living in a senior home.
That’s it. Many questions are annoyingly unanswered. I didn’t feel anything for any of the characters at the end. Tom, I suppose, was afraid to go to jail, and that is why he decided to stay with Marion. Why? We don’t know because we Don’t know anything about Tom.
Harry Styles said in an interview, “This film is about love and wasted time, and how hard it can be to be in love” I think if you want to make a movie about wasted time, don’t make the audience feel that they wasted their time watching it, make them really feel the characters wasted their life and more importantly why they did it.
The writer tried to make a happy ending, but it was just absurd.
The choices of these characters were more suitable for a high school story. Not full-grown adults. But regardless, stream the movie on Prime Video, and if you have some of the answers I am looking for, please write back to me.
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