The Winslow Boy

(Columbia TriStar)

David Mamet the filmmaker grows up with this adaptation of Terrence Rattigan's play about a 1912 London family where the 13-year-old son (Guy Edwards) has been expelled from the royal naval academy and the outraged father (Nigel Hawthorne) hires the country's best barrister (Jeremy Northam), who seems more interested in the daughter (Rebecca Pidgeon). Northam and Pidgeon bring a screwball spin to Rattigan's already loaded lines; and Mamet, like Bresson, places the drama's key events off screen.