Ken Loach directed a script by Jim Allen; they did it again a few years later in Land and Freedom (1995). This won Loach the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1990.
Journo Frances McDormand (in one of her less convincing performances) and human rights laywer/boyfriend Brad Dourif are wrapping up their activities in Belfast when he receives an apparently vital lead that takes him into the Irish countryside in the early morning. They've just completed their collection of testimony about the British authorities' dirty business in Northern Ireland but it is this last piece that somehow tips someone over the edge. Brian Cox (fine) arrives to investigate. Things go along OK in a TV police-procedural mode until we get a few zoomed-out tail-end expository dumps. McDormand's character makes little sense: she has absolutely no op-sec and shows little awareness of the danger she may be in or the damage she causes others. Why did she return to Belfast? — and who would ever expect justice from the very regime she's just spent all that time documenting?
There is some good but insufficient footage of British troops occupying the streets of Belfast.
Roger Ebert: three stars after a not-too-careful watch. Caryn James at the New York Times. "Variety staff" reckon it was based on the Stalker Enquiry of a few years earlier. IMDB trivia: McDormand and Dourif were also coupled in Mississippi Burning (1988). Some pointed to Costa-Gavras but really, come on.
