'My Policeman' review: Harry Styles stands out in sensitive drama

Though Styles is the marquee name here, he’s really part of a six-person ensemble. As “My Policeman” toggles back and forth between past and present, each role is played by a younger or older actor. Corrin, best known as Princess Diana in Netflix’s “The Crown,” plays the young Marion as a sheltered girl who is understandably smitten by Tom; after all, he’s boyishly handsome, and they share the same modest dreams. Equally smitten is Patrick, an older and more worldly man who moves between upper-crust circles and furtive back alleys. (Dawson, a veteran theater actor who plays Patrick with a touching vulnerability, is this movie’s secret star.) The three form an odd but freewheeling friendship — or so the ever-trusting Marion believes.

The older trio is far less happy. Tom (Linus Roche) and Marion (an excellent Gina McKee) are still married, and living in an uneventful seaside town, but something terrible has happened to Patrick. In a wheelchair following a stroke, he has neither money nor friends to help him. His arrival at Tom and Marion’s — she has volunteered to care for him — sets off a rush of memories, resentments and at least one shocking revelation. (This older, haunted Patrick is played movingly by Rupert Everett, the trailblazing gay star of 1984’s “Another Country.”)

Graceful direction from Michael Grandage (an English theater director; this is only his second feature film) and an eloquent screenplay by Ron Nyswaner (“Philadelphia”) keep “My Policeman” from feeling like a simplified message movie. It's driven by living, breathing characters whose relationships are both carnal and complicated. Tom has a purity of heart that attracts both Patrick and Marion, yet neither really knows what to do with their tormented policeman. It’s Tom’s inability to face himself — or is it the world’s refusal to let him? — that leads this movie to its heartbreaking end.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com