Featuring: Clive Owen, Andrea Riseborough, Gillian Anderson, Aidan Gillen, Domhnall Gleeson, Brid Brennan, Kevin Mulville
Director: James Marsh
Writer: Tom Bradby (adapted from his novel of the same title)

Perth release date: Somerville 24, 26–30 December, 8pm; Joondalup Pines 1–6 January, 8pm
Reviewer: rolanstein (one-word verdict: nail-biter!)

Story:
In 90s London, single mother and IRA activist Collette (Andrea Riseborough) is arrested for planting a bomb at a tube station. An MI5 officer, Mac (Clive Owen), offers her a stark choice: imprisonment vs returning to her Belfast home as an informer. With her young son’s welfare central to her decision, she agrees to the latter. Since her brothers are hardline IRA members in regular contact with senior leadership ordering assassinations and masterminding other terrorist activities, Collette’s informing role is both vital to MI5 and fraught with personal danger. Her risk escalates still further when she is forced into taking part in an IRA hit which MI5 agents foil, placing her under immediate suspicion within IRA ranks as the ‘rat’. The tension is tuned to extreme when Mac seeks unsuccessfully to pull her out of her informing role and discovers that MI5 has hidden agendas…

Review:
The action opens in the 70s, with Collette as a child bribing her younger brother to take on her father’s request that she run off to the nearest store to buy him some cigarettes. The brother is killed when British soldiers open fire on some fleeing IRA militants. Naturally, Collette’s guilt is crushing. Continue reading Shadow Dancer Movie Review →