The Investigator

The true story of a modern military witch-hunt and a culture of brutal intolerance.

As Staff Sergeant Caroline Meagher is led to the questioning rooms at the Londonderry base, under suspicion of being a homosexual, she looks back over her twelve year career in the British Armed Service, and her work for the "Red Caps" the Special Investigation Branch (SIB), especially the hunting down and exposing of lesbians in the Army, in a time when it was a court-martial offence.

This is by no means an easy film to watch. With the opening few minutes showing the investigative ransacking of her room and her "Walk of Shame" to the interrogation room, we can already see that Helen Baxendale's (Cold Feet, Friends) character is in a world of trouble, and as the film continues, the treatment of lesbians in the Army is shown to be cruel and even vindictive by those whose job it is to investigate them, leaving viewers like me - who can identify all too easily with the victims - squirming.

We flash back to her posting at the base in Wiltshire and her promotion from a clerk to a detective doing plain clothes work. After a simple domestic abuse case, Caroline is asked to work on an investigation into a ring of lesbians operating on a base in Weston. This leads to one of the most disturbing scenes in the film: the interrogation of PVT Debbie Spiller. The initial verbal abuse isn't anything unexpected, and nor is the sympathetic one-on-one Caroline has with her, but it's the callous cruelty of the questions the interrogating officers ask after she confesses that she is indeed a homosexual. Her statement of guilt and the name of her partner should have been all that was required, but the highly intimate questions about their coupling and the zealous glee that they approach asking them with is really quite chilling.

As the film progresses, we see Caroline Meagher discover and come to terms with her own sexuality, struggling to cope with the pressure she finds herself under to keep it secret from those around her. At first, she deals with it by sneaking around, and then by starting what seems to be a fake relationship with SGT Pete Storey whilst she was posted in Osnabrück, in the Federal Republic of Germany. After being transferred back to the United Kingdom, she enters a committed relationship with a schoolteacher, played by Laura Fraser (A Knight's Tale, Nina's Heavenly Delights), but is again posted elsewhere, this time to Londonderry in Northern Ireland, where things start to turn horribly wrong for her.

The thing about this film is the fact that it's not really about Caroline Meagher's relationships, but her struggle to hide her sexuality, and for someone like me, who came out regardless of the consequences, it's somewhat hard to take, although I'm not without sympathy towards her situation. An important thing to remember is the time frame in which this film is set: 1981-1989. Homosexuality was far less acceptable in general, let alone in the workplace, and it's this resistance, coupled with the British Military's unjust laws that motivates Caroline throughout the film.

The acting throughout is solid, apart from the very first two scenes where Helen Baxendale is issuing orders, seeming to lack the forceful confidence she should have. Once past that, she quickly settles into her role, balancing a range of emotions all at once. Katrina Levon (Backup, Where the Heart Is) is good as SSGT Chrissie Edgeworth, the lesbian SIB officer Caroline falls in love with, and she's sorely missed in the second half of this film. Their shared love scene was also quite good; relatively inexplicit as fits a 90's TV Movie. Meagher is awkward and uncertain whilst Edgeworth exudes a calm confidence as the two make love, making it all really quite endearing. Laura Fraser, as Meagher's other significant lover, is also comfortable in her role, but with both Chrissie and Louise, you can't help but wish they had more interaction with Caroline in the film.

The nine year timeframe works against the story, that, whilst necessary, it also leaves it feeling disjointed, interesting characters getting cast aside as the plot dictates. It's also unhelped by the non-descript direction and camerawork; it's not that it's bad, it's just that it's not even above average, completely and utterly the normal television fare. There's nothing especially inventive or dynamic about it, or even that interesting. Whilst being able to concentrate on the actresses is a good thing, a film needs to be more than just people talking, or else we'd go and see a stageplay version of it.

The film ends with the real Caroline Meagher talking for a few minutes about homosexuality in the British Military and how it was treated. The Investigator was initially shown on ITV in 1997, three years before the ban on homosexuality in the military was lifted, but even now that it is no longer illegal in Britain, it is still so in other countries around the world, such as the USA, where they practice the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy (The link visits the Wikipedia page on the subject). For more information about sexuality in the British Military today, you can visit proud2serve.

The Investigator is a good look at the life of homosexuals in the military, that while it may have lost some of its relevance in the United Kingdom, it still speaks to those of other nations around the world whose armed forces are just as bigoted as ours once were. The characters are good, as is the acting, and the storyline is certainly involving enough, but the film just lacks a certain je ne sais quoi to lift it from good to excellent. It's definitely something every lesbian, or even gay men, should watch once, but it doesn't particularly cry out for repeat viewings.

7/10

-- Reviewed on October the 4^th, 2007.

Find more details about The Investigator over at The Internet Movie Database.