I’m okay with Los Angeles magazine’s Jeff Sneider calling Bros the third best ’22 flick of the year (it was #29 on my own list). But he’s not allowed to put My Policeman in second place, or right after his #1 pick, Top Gun: Maverick. He can’t do that! My Policeman occasionally really blows, and yes, I’m aware of the redundancy.
[Posted on 10.29.22] “My Policeman (Amazon Prime, 11.4) is a tepid and morose gay tragedy, set in late 1950s England. And Harry Styles‘ rote performance as Tom Burgess, a sexually repressed gay policeman, is not a burnisher. Ditto David Dawson‘s as Patrick Hazlewood, a museum curator who becomes Tom’s lover and a rival for his affections in the matter of Emma Corrin‘s prim and proper Marion, who Tom marries because he needs a beard, which is a shitty thing to do.
“But Marion evens the score down the road. Shittily, I mean.
“Give Styles credit for bravely and energetically committing to some fairly graphic sex scenes with Hazlewood (kiss-slurping, panting, blowing, ass-fucking) but as I said in an earlier post, Styles is hot but Hazlewood isn’t, or at least not hot enough for me.
“There are some pretty guys whom straight guys can at least imagine having some kind of vague intimate contact with. Mick Jagger in Performance was one. In True Romance Christian Slater‘s Clarence Worley says that he could’ve fucked the young Elvis Presley. But one look at Hazlewood and I went “nope.” Cold eyes, dorky haircut, emotionally needy and greedy.
“I had a good laugh, however, when Dawson/Hazlewood hooks up with some anonymous guy and they decide to get down in an alleyway. They’re busted by a pair of bobbies before anything happens, but just before Dawson is about to drop to his knees the recipient drops a magazine on the damp pavement so Dawson won’t chafe his knees and his trousers won’t get wet. Thoughtful.
