REVIEW: Incendiary

You'd expect a movie about a terrorist attack to be actually about, well terrorism. But not this movie, which is more concerned with a mother's troubles dealing with a lost child. This isn't a bad thing, and topical movies told from a human perspective are often the best but the strokes are a little to broad here. Before I rag on the movie in too much detail I'd like to give props to both the performance and accent of Michelle Williams. It does raise the film up a couple of levels. But the film itself is an onslaught of unearned emotional beats that batters you down with unsubtle, blunted sentiment. The writing could have been a bit smoother also, with the script highly unorganized and scatty. The visuals are accomplished, which is nice to see in a British film, but there are a few too many misted flashback memories of the deceased child, something that actually hurts your connection with this film, because if its immense level of patronisation. Director Sharon Maguire doesn't credit the audience with enough intelligence and that is this film's downfall. Less is more, particularly in this case. There's also a shoehorned in subplot regarding cowardly police-man Matthew MacFadyen, which just isn't given enough space, MacFadyen is good but his character is uneven to say the least. Ewan MacGregor does a less interesting take of what we've seen him do a million times before and its amazing how directors keep wasting this guy. His agent should really get on it or he's not going to have much of a career left. Worth seeing for a great performance by a great actress, but there really isn't much else worth taking away from it such is its overly on-the-nose nature. There's even an ongoing voice-over from a letter to Osama Bin Laden, majorly not cool.

Rating: 5/10