Product Details

• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Running time: 115 minutes

From The New Yorker
This British true-crime drama, directed by Peter Medak from a script by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, has a satisfying gravity and solidity. It's set in the early fifties and it tells the story of Derek Bentley (played here by Chris Eccleston), who, at the age of nineteen, was executed for the murder of a policeman in South London. Derek, an epileptic and mildly retarded young man from a respectable middle-class family, didn't kill the cop; his sixteen-year-old friend Chris Craig (Paul Reynolds) was convicted of firing the fatal shot, but the prosecutors and the judge at the boys' trial convinced the jury that Derek had egged him on. The movie allows the terrible facts of the case to speak for themselves. The filmmakers keep our attention focussed on Derek and his anguished family; we see every stage of the action from the Bentleys' perspective, each cruel twist of fate in terms of its effects on them. The picture never seems abstract or tendentious; it's always grounded in something real. Medak's direction is sensitive and blessedly straightforward, and he does remarkable work with the actors. Eccleston is heartbreakingly convincing as Derek; Reynolds and Clare Holman (as the hero's sister) are very fine, too. But the movie's deepest pleasure is the performance of Tom Courtenay as Derek's father, William. Courtenay has become a miraculously pure and economical actor. Playing a soft-spoken, cautious, and rather reserved man, he's so vivid that by the end even the character's simplest gestures are eloquent. Also with Eileen Atkins, Tom Bell, Michael Gough, and Mark McGann. Cinematography by Oliver Stapleton. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

THEY LET HIM HAVE IT...
This film, based upon a true story, illustrates the misapplication of the death penalty. In 1953 England, a slow witted young man, Derek Bentley, was executed, hanged for his alleged part in the killing of a police officer. It was a case which received much notoriety at the time.

Derek Bentley (Chris Eccleston) was a learning disabled, young man who was easily led. His sister, Iris (Clare Holman), however, treated him like a regular guy, and he thrived under her watchful eye. His steadfast, working class parents, William and Lilian Bentley (Tom Courtenay and Eileen Atkins), did everything they could to ensure that their son would stay on the straight and narrow. Still, boys will be boys, and one night, Derek, wanting to be one of the boys, simply hooked up with the wrong crowd who was up to no good. Although Derek was unarmed, another of the other boys was not, and when an inevitable clash with the police came about, a police officer was shot. Derek's by now famous words, "Let him have it", were the catalyst for his trial, conviction, and execution.

Notwithstanding Derek's learning disability, the ambiguity of the statement attributed to him, and his tangential involvement during the shootout with the police, Derek was given the death penalty. The draconian sentence was a heartbreaking blow to Derek and his family, as it was always Derek's position that he meant for the shooter to let the police have the gun. Nearly forty five years later, after persistent efforts by his beloved sister, Iris, Derek was finally exonerated by the very courts that had earlier found him guilty. In reality, it was too little, too late, for Derek.

Chris Eccleston gives a bravura performance as the slow witted Derek, compelling and moving. He plays him as a young man who was aware of his shortcomings and very much wanted to be accepted by his peers. Tom Courtenay and Eileen Atkins are outstanding as the loving parents whose steadfast belief in the system is derailed at the last. Clare Holman is excellent as the sister whose expectations of her brother would never fail to make him try harder. All in all, the entire cast gives notable performances. Superbly directed by Peter Medak, it is a film well worth watching.

A shattering anti-death-penalty film with great performances
If Peter Medak's career since this film had fulfilled his promise in this one, he'd be one of the industry's leading directors. That Chris Eccleston, who has assembled an impressive body of work since his debut in this film, is still virtually unknown is nothing short of a crime.

This film is a must-see for anyone who believes that the death penalty is always meted out fairly. It dramatizes the 1953 U.K. execution by hanging of Derek Bentley, a learning-disabled young man involved peripherally in the shooting of a police officer.

"Let him have it, Chris!" Bentley uttered just before his young accomplice let the shots fly. Did he mean for him to shoot, or drop the gun? 43 years after Bentley's execution, in July 1998, the British courts finally agreed that he meant the latter.

The film is a smashing debut for Chris Eccleston, who imbues young Bentley with pathos without resorting to mannerisms or acting tricks. If you accidentally stumbled upon JUDE because you wanted to see Kate Winslet, check her equally-talented co-star out in this film.

Eccleston is backed up by equally poignant, yet muted supporting performances by Tom Courtenay (nice to see him in a film again) as Derek's father, and by Eileen Atkins as his mother, as well as Clare Holman as his understanding sister Iris, who tries valiantly to help her brother survive in the mainstream.

The knowledge that Iris Bentley died merely months before her brother was exonerated makes this film even more heartbreaking.

A Magnificent Achievement!!!
I won't bother telling the plot of this film since so many other reviewers have outlined it in great detail. I will only say there is no greater cinematic indictment of the death penalty than this devastating film. What gives it special significance, of course, is that it is based on a true case - a case that eventually led to abolition of capital punishment in Great Britain. I shutter to think of the number of innocent people executed in countries (including the so-called "civilized" United States) practicing capital punishment in order to satisfy the public's hasty and often misguided need for revenge. LET HIM HAVE IT will have a profound impact on anyone who sees it, regardless of his/her stand on the death penalty.