An elegy on an entire generation -- the one that came of age during the Second World War -- but narrowly focussed on four East London drinking buddies, and most particularly on the two whose friendship dates to the North African theater of the war. The title, from the Booker Prize-winning book by Graham Swift, refers not to any commands issued at that time, nor to the final call at the Coach and Horses pub, but instead to the deathbed wish of one of the four -- Jack -- to have his ashes scattered from the Margate pier. (Michael Caine begins the movie inside a jar in a cardboard carton: hence, in an aside from one of his cronies, "Jack in a box.") The narrative flits back and forth through time with a novelistic, free-associative agility, easy as changing tenses. The screen version has no trouble with the time shifts per se, even without (thankfully) any needless visual cues on the order of different focuses, colored tints, and whatnot: every setting is equally sharp and clear, as it would appear to those occupying it. Where the movie hits a snag, where the fluidity tends to coagulate, where we seem to have switched channels into another movie, is in the common problem of trying to match younger actors with older. Some things simply work better on the page, in front of the mind's eye. We know too well what Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, Tom Courtenay, David Hemmings, and Helen Mirren looked like when they were young: Zulu, Zulu Dawn, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, Blow-Up, and Age of Consent, respectively. But these, together with Ray Winstone as Caine's and Mirren's adopted son, are seasoned players, with no cause to grandstand; and they all reap plenty of poignance from memories of their former selves, when not usurped, anyhow, by imposters. Directed by Fred Schepisi. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd