FILM REVIEW
Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non-Functional.
Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non-Functional.
SHADOW DANCER
Dir: James Marsh
Stars: Andrea Riseborough, Clive Owen, Gillian Anderson, Aiden Gillen, David Wilmot
Running Time: 101mins
Following in the footsteps of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Shadow Dancer
is an absorbing period thriller about divided loyalties, instability in
the British intelligence services, and the personal cost of political
turmoil. Director James Marsh is best known for his acclaimed
documentaries Man On Wire and Project Nim, but also directed an episode of the astounding television drama Red Riding.
His first foray into cinematic fiction shows a confident command of his
craft, steadily escalating the tension and never using words when
visuals will do.
Where Tinker was coldly methodical in its approach to the
genre, Marsh centres his story around a single Irish mother, Colette
McVeigh (Andrea Riseborough), born into a family firmly rooted in the
Irish nationalist movement, but forced to work with a British agent
(Clive Owen) to protect her son.
Where most thrillers are quick to establish their protagonist's
extraordinary skills, Colette is a fragile, vulnerable presence from her
first moment on-screen. Suffocating with guilt, she's manipulated by
all sides in a conflict for which she shows little enthusiasm for
picking a side. Her older brothers, Gerry and Connor, are deeply
embedded in the IRA and its battle to (ostensibly) gain independence for
Northern Ireland, and the planning of terrorist activity is a regular
occurrence in her family home. She's a volunteer, but her real concern
is keeping her young son safe from the violence raging in the streets
outside. Having unwittingly sent her brother to his death when they were
children, the idea of civilian slaughter - even of the British - fills
her with horror. After being captured by MI5, she's faced with the
choice of becoming a mole, or spending the rest of her life in prison
and having her son sent into care.
It's a relatively novel approach to the genre, because there's no
sense of Colette having any control over what is happening to her. If
you like your heroes dynamic and confrontational, look away now. She's
brave and quick-thinking, but always kept a step behind the truth by her
MI5 spymasters and IRA brothers. Andrea Riseborough, an actress of
extraordinary expressiveness and subtlety when not 'directed' by Madonna,
communicates her character's splintering psyche with every part of her
body, from her huddled demeanour and slightly off-balance walk to every
fearful stare over her shoulder.
If the story's heart and tension come from Colette, a walking symbol
of every victim of a war between two sides prepared to send ordinary
people to their deaths, the mystery is handled by her MI5 handler, Mac.
Clive Owen plays the part in more or less the same way he plays every
part, gruff and simmering with controlled anger, but is a good fit for a
character who serves as little more than a plot device, uncovering the
extent to which a disorganised, reactionary British Intelligence are
ready to sacrifice their human assets on an ill-considered whim. Whether
he likes to admit it or not, Mac is part of the system propagating the
conflict and thus part of the problem.
Considering how divisive the IRA issue still is, Marsh takes care to
present both sides as morally questionable: Mac's boss, Kate (Gillian
Anderson), appreciates the people risking their lives for her cause in
Northern Ireland strictly in terms of the information they bring back.
When required to sacrifice one to save someone more valuable, her
decision is taken in less than a heartbeat. On the other hand, her
amorality is at least partially understandable when presented with the
horrors being acted out by the IRA, who are happy to plant bombs in
public places and murder civilians in broad daylight. As peace talks get
underway, there's a sense that the McVeigh brothers' fight is guided
more by revenge and hatred than any great eagerness for their country's
independence.
While Riseborough expertly holds sympathy for Colette, Mac's
storyline never quite grips as effectively as it should. Its
consequences for Colette's safety keep the tension rising as suspicions
are increasingly cast on her loyalty to the cause by Aidan Gillen's
terrifying Kevin, who undertakes his responsibility for unearthing and
eliminating traitors with ravenous zeal. The climactic reveal which
gives the movie its title lands a solid emotional punch, and the
turnabout it inspires in a lead character reinforces the
self-destructive nature of the conflict. Nevertheless, the impact is all
on Colette's side: while it's very much the point that Mac and Kevin
represent the movie's active characters, lighting fuses as Colette
dodges explosions, the imbalance of sympathy creates a disconnect from
Mac's story that holds back its big moments from being completely
satisfying. Other misjudgments - like Colette going to a secret
rendezvous in the most conspicuously bright red raincoat this side of Don't Look Now - are minor, but jarring.
The movie is fortunately a strong enough atmospheric piece to
compensate for such shortcomings. The cinematography is bleakly
compelling, creating a domestic battleground out of Belfast's streets
that reinforces the importance of family bonds. Marsh is supremely adept
at quietly building suspense, providing just enough information to
establish a lurking danger and leaving viewers' imaginations to expect
the worst. An early scene in which Colette wanders through an
underground station, bag in hand, holds back from answering whether
she's planting a bomb, performing reconnaissance, or just on some
innocent errand. Maintaining the uncertainty creates tension that would
have blunted by literalising the assumed danger. Similarly, Colette
spotting a man rolling up a sheet of transparent tarpaulin in a room
adjacent to her interrogation is all the more ominous for its meaning
being implied rather than explicit.
Between Marsh's expert directorial restraint and Riseborough's ever-stunning performance, Shadow Dancer continues the British film industry's recent resurgence (see also: Kill List and Wild Bill)
and deserves the attention of anyone in need of relief following
another summer of loud, artistically underwhelming blockbuster excess. [ 8 ]
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