CANNES REVIEW:ROUTE IRISH ***
Directed by Ken Loach. Starring Mark Womack, John Bishop, Andrea Lowe, Trevor Williams 109 min
THE CANNES PREMIERE of a Ken Loach film is an event. It is all the more special when he is competing against his old chum Mike Leigh. Though the French may tip the hat to Peter Greenaway, Leigh and Loach are really the only British directors they rate as major auteurs. Unhappily for Ken, Route Irish, though diverting enough, is not likely to tip Mike's superior Another Yearfrom its position as favourite for the Palme d'Or.
The film has the shape of a thriller. Mark Womack stars as Fergus, a former soldier who smells a rat upon hearing that Frankie, an old pal and comrade, recently a private contractor in Iraq, has been killed on the so-called “Route Irish”, the perilous road between Baghdad Airport and the Green Zone.
At Frankie’s funeral, Fergus spots the dead man’s boss, a former army officer, circulating business cards to grieving soldiers. After flying off the handle, he looks further into the tragedy. It hardly needs to be said that the posh men in suits are not as blameless as they pretend.
Working from a script by Paul Laverty, his regular collaborator, Loach, as ever, draws earthy, effortlessly natural performances from all his actors.
The film is also motivated by an invigorating anger at the moral abominations that characterise the new puppet republic in Iraq. Private contractors (basically mercenaries) seem to have been above the law until quite recently.
Unfortunately, Route Irishfails to generate any significant suspense. The villains are apparent from the opening frames and, though the plot goes through a few gentle chicanes, it never encounters anything you could sincerely call a twist.
More seriously, Laverty allows himself to indulge in at least two moments of overheated absurdity: a preposterous outbreak of water-boarding and a denouement that would not seem out of place in a Victorian melodrama. Still, Loach is such a sound storyteller that the film just about manages to sustain interest over its tidy length. Viewed as a weightless diversion between major projects, it just about justifies its existence.
