15/05/12 Harry's Game (1982)

Strictly speaking a mini-series rather than a film, but I think its relatively short running time of a shade under three hours allows it inclusion.

Billy Downes (played by Jeff from The Long Good Friday) pops round a politician's house and shoots him in the head on behalf of the IRA.

See, Harold Shand was right not to trust him.

The rest of the series/film is mostly about Ray Lonnen's "Harry" -hilariously discribed as 34yrs old- nipping over to Northern Ireland to find BillyJeff and return the favour.

Briefly putting on my maturity gloves, this is an excellent and, I'm assuming, one of the more realistic portrayals of Anglo-Catholic relationships during The Troubles. Most impressively I thought was that the show has a very small core cast of maybe twenty people, yet the events in the film worked very well as a microcosm narrative of the whole, bigger mess. The resulting message of which is: It was (and possibly still is) fucked beyond any likelyhood of full, permanent peace and compromise on all sides.

Anyway, watch it if you haven't, if nothing else for the cheerful clothing and interiors that an optimistic colour chart might describe as Dull Biscuit.

Also, it's got Linda Robson during her brief "definately window". *Ahem*.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084053/

9/10

                                                                           Perkin.