Many at the screening were impressed that, yet once again, this is "based on a true story." That should be irrelevant, for truth, after all, is that slippery slope in each beholder's eye, and, moreover, cinema involves another interpreter's reframing of a first or second version, thus at several removes from whatever perceived facts.

What seems impressive, on the other hand, and made for an enjoyable evening, is the fine tone achieved in Two Men Went to War, John Henderson's film from a Richard Everett-Christopher Villiers script derived from Raymond Foxall's 1980 book, Amateur Commandos, Two Men Went to War. In some ways reminiscent of the less gentle King of Hearts  and How I Won the War, with its understated humor and avoidance of visual trickery the film calls to mind a lost era of slyly wonderful "little" British movies.

The time is early 1942, at once the darkest and the finest hour of a beleaguered England. But while in the broad sense a war film, this one is limited in its characters and really is about the individual -- two of them -- and his capacity to "carry on" and even, at times, bumble into heroism. Above all, it is a comic but loving view of the pluck of the common man. The director's 1980s Spitting Image series was mordantly satirical, while here "you take normal people and put them in a situation that is abnormal, [and] comedy derives from the fact that the characters just don't know how to handle the situation."

At Aldershot, Hampshire, training base, young sharp-faced, adenoidal-looking Private Leslie Cuthbertson (Leo Bill) chafes at studying military dentistry. Notwithstanding assurances that "toothache in the battlefield is no joke," he comes near to blowing up the Corps's arsenal in his desire to be a real field soldier. His superior, New Zealander Sergeant Peter King (veteran Scots actor Kenneth Cranham, in his first starring rôle) had won a medal at hellish Paschendale--for less than glorious deeds, it comes out--but is passed by for overseas assignment because of age and an old leg wound. He, too, dreams of serving King and Commonweal at the front and hatches a plan that includes Cuthbertson, the only one "daft enough to carry the ruddy grenades."

Actual warfare is less efficient and organized than most accounts would have us believe, so it is both acceptable and humorous as, in full gear, the two men simply jog trot off base, board a train to Plymouth and, after a goo-goo-eyed fishing village lassie (Rosanna Lavelle) falls for the private, borrow Eric's motorized smack and head vaguely for occupied France. Their objective is to sink two battleships or maybe some submarines or, failing that, wreak havoc and cut lines of communication.

Juxtaposed against their no-frills incursion are the military's search for what appear to be the two deserters or possibly spies and, at greater length, the trials below Whitehall of the great but troubled Prime Minister. Faced with Rommel's North African successes, a sleepless Churchill doubts his ability to deliver on promises and "want[s] a wonder, a rabbit out of the hat." Connecting these two threads, the common soldier and the patrician politician with the common touch, is the Sergeant's letter to that leader. Through mail pouches, security checks, secretaries and misplacements, the envelope hinting at just such an inspirational wonder and containing the pledge of two soldiers' pay books, reaches Major Merton (Derek Jacobi) and thus at last Winnie himself.

Without blood or brutality, even its Germans neither villainous nor efficient, the story dwells on the pure humanity of individual soldiers. To a mock-stirring "the dentists are coming," the two humble Brits open to each other and grow, as heroism is ultimately secondary and accidental. Careful period detail and songs -- e.g., "We're going to hang our washing on the Siegfried Line, if the Siegfried Line's still there" -- are low-key, the English and French landscapes beautiful but not overplayed.

Quietly making its point, and gaining points, Two Men Went to War is a delight for those old enough to savor another time, another world. Despite some success on its 2002 U.K. release, it is not likely to attract the boisterous young, though it is a film well worth the seeing.

(Released by Indican Pictures and rated "PG-13" for some violence.)