Shadow Dancer Review

8/10
Pros: Shadow Dancer is suspense-filled and deeply moving.
Cons: Grim, sad and hard-hitting – as grey as the Belfast skies that decorate it.

It might not be often that a grim and hard-hitting film about the Irish troubles is recommended passionately, but Shadow Dancer, directed by James Marsh, is an atmospheric and moving thriller that’s definitely worth a see.

It tells the story of struggling single mother Collette (Andrea Riseborough), who lives with her young son, mother and hardliner IRA brothers in 1990s Belfast. Still guilt-ridden by the death of her young brother - who was shot to death in 1973 in their neighbouring streets while running an errand which she forced upon him - Collette atones her guilt as a loyal and radicalised member of the IRA.

The organisation’s high-ranks – including her brothers Connor and Gerry (Domhnall Gleeson and Aidan Gillen) – have sent her to London where her mission is to plant a bomb on London’s tubes. The action scene is harrowing in itself, as a nervous, tattered and frantic Colette grows paranoid with every stranger’s glance. When she steps onto the platform, she spots that she’s been spotted and in a thrilling and suspense-filled chasing scene, she is eventually taken to Mac (Clive Owen), an MI5 officer who gives her an ultimatum: go to prison for 25 years or return to Belfast as an informer.

Torn between the choice of never being a mother to her son or turn against the rest of her family and all she believes in, Collette is eventually persuaded to place her trust in Mac on his basis that, “nobody dies and nobody gets hurt”.

As she returns home to spy on her family and the even higher-ranks of the IRA, the trepidation becomes almost unbearable to handle. Constantly under pressure to deliver information to Mac on an assassination her brothers are planning, Collette also faces suspicion from the ruthless IRA Kevin Mulville (David Wilmot), who isn’t taking any of her frenzied excuses. When the plot is ambushed by British Security Forces, the trepidation hits a peak and from there, the plot spirals into riveting and unexpected destinations.

Andrea Riseborough is brilliant in her role as the twenty-something mole; her tired face convincingly displaying the expected worn and fret and Clive Owen is as slick and confident as he normally is.

Written by Tom Bradby, Shadow Dancer is not a feel-good film – in fact, it’s as grey as the Belfast skies that decorate it. But the palpable and chilling film is deeply moving, serving as a realistic account of the gritty reality of what it must have been like at the foreground of such a sad and sore time.


100 minutes.

Released: 24th August 2012

By Jennifer Tate
Twitter: @JennieTate