terrorism
Adam Sweeting
So far Jon Hamm has had trouble finding himself movie roles which fit him quite as impeccably as Mad Men’s Don Draper – though he could do worse than throw his hat in the ring for James Bond – but his role here as an American diplomat in Beirut plays obligingly to his strengths. A tale of twisted loyalties and spookish double-dealing, it’s directed by Brad Anderson from a 25-year-old script by Tony Gilroy (a veteran of the Bourne franchise and writer/director of Michael Clayton), and gives Hamm room to probe the porous boundaries of love, loss, loyalty and betrayal.The story begins in 1972, Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Aidan Turner may not reveal those famously bronzed pecs that have made TV's Poldark box office catnip in his West End debut. But what Michael Grandage's funny and fiery revival of The Lieutenant of Inishmore reveals in spades is the irresistible charisma and stage savvy of an actor fully at home in what can only be called Martin McDonagh-land. Bring Turner's full-on brio together with an ensemble who mine every mountingly absurdist moment of the play's deathly landscape and you've got a star vehicle that turns out to be far more than that, as well: a bruising tonic for our troubled times Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The issue of immigrants being smuggled across the Mexican border into the USA is currently live and inflammatory, and this second instalment of the feds-versus-drugs cartels saga hurls us right into the centre of it. This explosive thriller is frequently shocking in its explicit violence, and its cynical view of power, crime and politics verges on the nihilistic, but it’s difficult to get its brutal imagery out of your mind.The original Sicario from 2015 had Emily Blunt on board as FBI agent Kate Macer, who provided a kind of startled audience’s-eye-view of the hardcore tactics of drug Read more ...
Saskia Baron
The Cannes jury in 2017 gave best actress to Diane Kruger for her performance in In the Fade. She plays Katja, who turns avenging angel when her son and Turkish husband are murdered. It’s Kruger’s first acting role in her native German and she’s on screen for almost the entire film. Whether you are absorbed by the narrative of In the Fade (German title: Aus der Nichts) or find yourself distanced by the stylistic tics and plot holes, probably depends on how much Kruger/Katja convinces you. I kept being reminded of another intelligent, beautiful model turned actress, Jessica Lange, who took on Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
I’ve never been in the Army, but I can’t imagine anybody involved with the making of Our Girl (BBC One) has either. This fourth series continues the drama’s traditional formula of carting Corporal Georgie Lane (Michelle Keegan) and her fellow-members of 2 Section off to some mysterious or exotic location (Kenya, Nepal and now Nigeria), and mixing up humanitarian work with a few military shenanigans while deluging the whole lot in a thick layer of soap.Writer Tony Grounds has sought to add a twist of emotional poignancy by reminding us of the fate of Georgie’s former lover, dashing SAS glamour Read more ...
Jasper Rees
“I thought she maybe had superpowers to go that high.” Emilia Senior, 12, watched her sister Eve, 15, thrown into the air by the force of the explosion. When Eve came to earth her own perception had tilted on its axis: “I saw my legs on fire,” she remembered, “and then I was unconscious.” Short of targeting a kindergarten, a terrorist could not have chosen to decimate a more blameless demographic than teen fans of Ariana Grande. It was the details that broke the heart as some of these thousands of girls remembered the aftermath of the terrorist attack a year ago at the Manchester Arena. ( Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The freeing of a plane-load of hostages by Israeli forces at Entebbe airport in Uganda in 1976 produced an instant spate of movie versions. Raid on Entebbe starred Peter Finch and Charles Bronson, Victory at Entebbe offered gainful employment to Elizabeth Taylor, Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster, while the Israeli-made Operation Thunderbolt featured Klaus Kinski as German hijacker Wilfried Böse.In this new update by Brazilian director José Padilha (RoboCop, Narcos), the Böse role goes to Daniel Brühl, playing opposite a disappointingly brittle Rosamund Pike as his partner in ideologically- Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Writer Robert Schenkkan’s Building the Wall imagines modern America in the not-too-distant future. The date is 22nd November 2019 and following an attack on Times Square in which 17 people were killed, martial law has been imposed. Demands for illegal immigrants to be thrown out of the country have resulted in mass round ups and swollen detention centres. Hysteria stalks the country.We find ourselves in an interview room in El Paso prison, Texas. Rick (played by Trevor White) is a Trump-voting felon incarcerated in a surveilled solitary confinement cell. Gloria (played by Angela Griffin) is Read more ...
Owen Richards
Major Fakhir is a deminer, responsible for disarming hundreds of mines around Mosul every week. His American counterparts know him by a different title: Crazy Fakhir, a man who rides the edge of his luck, constantly in imminent danger. Yet to him, death is nothing compared to the heavy conscience he would carry by doing nothing.The Deminer is an extraordinary insight into the life of Major Fakhir, compiled from around 50 hours of amateur footage. Armed with little more than a pair of wire cutters and a knife, Fakhir tackles a variety of bombs with worrying abandon: he hacks around landmines Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In the previous couple of episodes, some light began to seep into the subterranean gloom of the Copenhagen kidnappers, or at any rate onto their identities and motivations. The military theme with which Below the Surface opened, with Philip Norgaard (Johannes Lassen) being battered to a pulp by his captors somewhere in the Middle East, was proving to be the key to the mystery, as Norgaard himself suspected from early on. Now we knew that the terrorist leader was Mark Hald (Jakob Oftebro), previously believed killed in action, and that the hostage crisis somehow stemmed from the battlefield Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Read Adam Sweeting's review of the Below the Surface FinaleAfter recent experiences with the likes of McMafia, Troy and Collateral, mysteriously moribund affairs apparently designed by a committee of box-ticking zombies, many a viewer will turn with relief to another dose of good old Scandi drama. Terrorist thriller Below the Surface isn’t exactly Denmark’s finest hour, but it has enough intrigue and tension to justify its place in BBC Four’s ever-popular Saturday night import slot.In outline, the setup is none too complicated. A group of lethally efficient and heavily-armed terrorists have Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
After a mysterious mid-season break which seemed to catch everyone by surprise, Strike Back’s sixth season belatedly bounces noisily back. So far the story has ricocheted around the Middle East before detouring to Hungary, where our indestructible Section 20 operatives just managed to save “Mac” McAllister (Warren Brown) from being hanged by the fanatical Magyar Ultra extremist group.Now, though, they’re in Belarus, still on the trail of Warrington’s jihadi queen Jane Lowry (Katherine Kelly), who looks as though she’d be more at home managing a branch of Morrisons than plotting to wreak Read more ...