Shadow Dancer

Synopsis: In 1990s Belfast, a young mother and member of the IRA (Andrea Riseborough) becomes an informant for MI5.

The Troubles in Northern Ireland have been the subject of an unusually strong number of films, from Jim Sheridan’s In The Name Of The Father (1993) and The Boxer (1997) to Steve McQueen’s Hunger (2008). Although the dominant tone of Shadow Dancer is that of an espionage thriller, it certainly deserves to be included in that group of fine films.

It opens powerfully with a flashback to 1973 when young Collette McVeigh, inadvertently has a hand in the death of her younger brother who is killed in crossfire between the IRA and British. Typical of the whole film it is a richly succinct scene, capturing the times with telling economy and infused with emotional pain. From this point director Marsh never lets go of our attention as we fast-forward 20 years and now find the adult Collette (Riseborough) working for the Republican cause and about to plant a bomb on a London tube train. Before she can do this, however, she is snatched by MI5 operative, Mac (Clive Owen), and offered the choice of becoming his mole or going to jail.

Beyond being a gripping cloak and dagger thriller, Shadow Dancer is a potent observation of conflicted characters: Collette, haunted by her past, loyal to her brothers, both fervid Republicans, yet not wanting to be separated from her young son; and Mac, dedicated to stopping IRA terrorism, yet sympathetic to Collette and aware that they are both pawns in a larger political game.

The script by Tom Bradby who adapted his own novel is not large on plotting and we tend to see moments along the narrative timeline with little connecting them. Marsh, with the help of a broodily suspenseful score by Dickon Hinchliffe, who provided the music for Winter’s Bone (2010), and Rob Hardy’s leached cinematography concentrates on mood, articulating thoughts and feeling through physical expression rather than verbal language as he takes us on a nail-biting journey to an unknown destination.

Performances across the board are strong with, in the lead, Riseborough (very different from her role as Wallis Simpson in Madonna's under-rated W.E. of last year) conveying Collette’s determined weathering of her emotional storm and Owen understated as her concerned handler. A far cry from the visceral action and revolving-door plotting of Hollywood spy thrillers and closer in sensibility to last year’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Shadow Dancer is unflinching in its depiction of the brutal cost of Ireland’s internecine war.

 

 

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