The Winslow Boy

Arthur Winslow (Nigel Hawthorne), a London father in the years before the First World War, learns that his young son has been expelled from naval college over the theft of a postal order. He and his wife Grace (Gemma Jones) refuse to let the charge stand, and the case grows into a public quarrel with the Admiralty. David Mamet adapts Terence Rattigan's play and keeps the telling spare and exact, with most of the drama in the parlor.