For Queen & Country (1988)

See also For king and country (disambiguation).

For Queen and Country is a British-American 1988 crime drama film written and directed by Martin Stellman and starring Denzel Washington. Washington stars as Reuben James, a Black British former paratrooper, who joined the British Army to escape the poverty of inner city London; Reuben fights in the Falklands War, and upon returning home he finds that society ignores and challenges him while trying to adjust to normal life.

The film received mixed reviews and was a box office flop. It has recently been reevaluated as a serious critique of Thatcherism and its effect in 1980's Britain.

Synopsis

Reuben James (Washington), although having grown up in London, was born in St. Lucia, West Indies, and joined the British Army to escape the poverty of inner city life. He serves with the Parachute Regiment, doing a tour in Northern Ireland for three years at the height of The Troubles in the late 1970s, and later fighting in the 1982 Malvinas/Falklands in the South Atlantic for the remainder of his military career, eventually becoming a war hero himself.

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