Review of Shadow Dancer (2012) by Thomas W — 23 Jan 2014

Oscar-winning*documentary filmmaker James Marsh (Man on Wire*, The Team, Project Nim) has tried his hand at directing narrative features in the past whose most successful one was part of the quiet yet grim Red Riding serial killer trilogy.

Englishman Marsh helmed the middle segment of that series entitled The Year of Our Lord 1980. Marsh stays in the past - while jumping forward a little over a decade - with his Irish Republican Army Belfast-based drama Shadow Dancer that stars Andrea Riseborough (Oblivion, Disconnect, W.

E.) as Collette, a failed IRA operative turned desperate MI5 informant who is being bullied and manipulated by government agents to do their bidding by spying on some of her closest friends. Mac (Clive Owen - Closer, Children of Men) controls Collette by dangling the lives of her son and various other family members in front of her .

.. letting her know the lives of her closest family members depend solely upon her as the IRA would not hesitate in ending their lives if they believed her to be a turncoat. When Kate Fletcher (Gillian Anderson - The X-Files, The House of Mirth) - a demanding new agent - steps into the picture and jeopardizes the long-running operation by requesting even more out of a dangerously frazzled Collette, the single Irish mother who has lost loved ones to the cause no longer knows who she can trust.

Game of Thrones' Aidan Gillen and Domhnall Gleeson (About Time, Harry Potter) co-star in this slow moving and unfolding drama - with some very thick accents - that audiences may have a hard time with as there is more drama than action to be found onscreen.

While it is an acting showcase for the three leads, audiences probably will want more.