Cinema: An elderly Clint and a very miserable Diana

It’s a reasonable enough pretext for a film: a one-time rodeo star and washed-up horse breeder who takes a job from an ex-boss to bring the man’s young son home from Mexico, back in 1979.

It’s a hazardous trip in all sorts of ways. The man’s ex-girlfriend is surround by gun-slinging gangster-types – and it’s not long before she’s flinging herself at our hero. And she’s very annoyed when he says no.

So, no, it’s not an awful storyline. But it’s sunk from the start by its choice of star.

Presumably when you are Clint Eastwood you can play any role you like, particularly when you are also producing and directing. And that’s the sad thing. It seems no one, at any point, thought to say to him, “Look, Clint, you’re 91. Is this really going to work?”

With the best will in the world, Eastwood’s clearly going to be no one’s first choice of rescuer for a mission into lawless Mexico. As for those women, half his age, throwing themselves at him, well, there’s something just a little bit odd going on there.

There’s no need for Clint to act his age exactly, but when you walk and talk like an old man, you need to act somewhere near it – and he might just find far more interesting material if he did so. As it is, Clint’s casting of himself is so odd that the film just never particularly stirs or thrills, quite apart from the fact that it all proceeds at such a leisurely pace. Apart from the rescue, that is. Clint finds the boy far too quickly; most of the film is about the journey home.

Clearly the idea is to focus on the growing understanding between these two opposites at their opposite ends of life, but nothing truly memorable emerges, and for the most part the film is frankly dull.

At least the same can’t be said about Spencer, the new film starring Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana across a gruesome weekend with her in-laws. It’s provocative to say the least.

It’s clearly a film made by people who have absolutely no time for the Royal family, but equally they seem to have very little time for Diana either. The royals behave abysmally to her if this film is to be believed; but it if is to be believed, she also behaves abysmally to her children. And that’s the problem.

It is presented as a fable based on a true tragedy, but it is also presenting real-life people not so very many years after the time it depicts. And that seems dangerous because it is so easy to watch and assume that this is what actually happened - even when we are watching the most private of exchanges. For good measure, a couple of invented servants have been chucked in, one cold and sinisterly watching, the other a dresser cooingly in love with Diana.

Clearly there is some truth in there somewhere but who are we to attempt to separate it from the flights of fantasy and conjecture? It was clearly a nightmare for all concerned, with Diana a deeply troubled, isolated and desperate character. But just as troubling as the situation that she finds herself in is the fact that the film has been made at all – even if Kristen Stewart does give a remarkable performance as the ill-fated princess.