LET HIM HAVE IT
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
LET HIM HAVE IT is a movie directed by Peter Medak and written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. It stars Chris Eccleston, Paul Reynolds, Tom Courtenay, Eileen Atkins, Clare Holman, and Tom Bell. Rated R -- due to violence and strong language.
LET HIM HAVE IT presents a true story of the notorious Craig-Bentley murder trial in Great Britain of 1952. It is a gripping, engrossing attack on miscarried justice and the death penalty. Peter Medak previously directed THE KRAYS, another true story set in the drab Fifties, the endless row houses, and illuminated by the movies-driven gangster obsessions. But in terms of style and technique LET HIM HAVE IT goes off in quite a different direction. It is less showy, more naturalistic, more a character study than a case study.
The case has apparently been a controversial story in Britain for four decades. There have been, I understand, a West End play, a shelf of books, several TV documentaries, a song by Elvis Costello, and a petition drive to clear Derek Bentley's name. The Home Office recently decided to reopen the file.
At issue is whether Bentley should have been hanged for the murder of a police officer during a bungled break-in. Bentley's pal Chris Craig pulled the trigger and Bentley was already under technical arrest at the time. But Bentley was 19 and could be hanged, whereas Craig was 16 and too young to die; instead, he served 10 years in prison. Adding to the controversy was the fact that Bentley had a very limited intelligence, rated no more than an 11-year-old's.
It was Bentley's words "Let him have it, Chris" when the police officer demanded Craig's gun that hanged him. The prosecution said it meant "Open fire" and the defense said it meant "Surrender the gun." Craig let him have it and wounded that officer and twenty minutes later shot another in the head.
Medak builds a case that leaves no doubt in the viewer's mind that Bentley should never have been tried, much less executed. He follows Bentley's life episodically from the time he as a child was buried alive in building rubble during the bombing of London, an experience Medak implies left Bentley with epilepsy or other brain damage or both. He builds up a sympathetic portrait of a young man who needed help more than hanging.
One of the glories of this film is its superb ensemble cast. Chris Eccleston and Paul Reynolds could not have been better as Bentley and Craig, respectively; Eccleston commands the screen in an extraordinary way for a newcomer, and Reynolds with his weird, sardonic, leary grin and trickster energy is impressive as the angry, playful baby-gangster. The elder Bentleys are played by Tom Courtenay and Eileen Atkins in memorable, moving portrayals of loving people struggling against currents totally out of their depths. These four are supported by rich performances from veterans of the Swinging London era of the Sixties -- Clive Revill, Murray Melvin, Michael Gough, Ronald Fraser, and Tom Bell. Clare Holman as Bentley's sister is warm, caring, protective.
In addition, Medak, his cinematographer Oliver Stapleton, and the rest recreate violence-weary post-War Britain with amazing completeness and conviction.
The script by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade concentrates more on the personal story of the Bentley family than on the sociology, psychology, jurisprudence, or politics of the case. We have wonderful portraits, but we are left wondering why Bentley was hanged. Were the police determined to have a blood sacrifice to expiate the death of the officer? Did the Home Secretary connive at Bentley's death? Did the judge intervene unfairly in his summation to the jury? Maybe these are the questions that cannot be answered. So we come away vastly moved, saddened, repulsed by justice too swift and too final, deeply impressed by a powerful film and a strange story.
I hope you get a chance to see LET HIM HAVE IT. In the Seattle area it is playing at the Metro Cinema. I recommend it at any price. And if anyone in the U.K. wants to write me about how the film was received there, I'd appreciate it.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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