Shadow Dancer (2012)
1/10
A feeble would-be love story smothered in tabloid politics
26 January 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Clive Owen is an MI5 stooge who instantly turns a Belfast bomb-dropper-offer woman into an informer, in spite of saying, 'This is going to take some time'. And yes, we get it: Belfast in the troubles (which aren't over btw) is as bleak as it gets. Those IRA guys just want everyone to be as miserable as they are, it seems.

Now, introduce hundreds of indistinguishable miserable characters without names or any particular reason to exist other than it's a 'political' film, yeah? A few vignettes of IRA funerals and suchlike, just to lighten the mood. Forget to show the heroine for half an hour, and focus on Clive Owen's double chin.

Fast forward ninety minutes. Still awake? Suddenly, Clive and his informer kiss. Fast forward thirty more minutes. then she arranges for his car to be booby trapped even though he offered to elope with her, I think. Because her mother's an informer too, and she has to die.

You see, those IRA types just can't be anything but miserable.

Who wrote this tripe? Is that the Tom Bradby who was ITV's political editor? Stick to news, Tom. If it wasn't you, sorry.
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