Ken Loach / UK, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain / 2010 / 101 minutes / tbc

GFF @ GFT, Wed 23rd and Thurs 24th Feb

Director Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty return to more familiar, bleak territory after the considerably more lightweight Looking for Eric, and turn in a powerful, salient political thriller.

Former SAS soldier and private security contractor Fergus (Mark Womack) has returned to his hometown of Liverpool, haunted and traumatised by his actions in Iraq and elsewhere. When lifelong friend Frankie (John Bishop), a fellow contractor and ex-military man, is killed on the infamous eponymous stretch of road between the Bagdad Green Zone and the city’s airport, Fergus decides to investigate further.

Part mystery, part stark critique of the grotesque ‘disaster capitalism’ inherent within the privatisation of war-zone security and restructure, Loach’s film bristles with anger and disgust. With little interest in the rights and wrongs of going to war in the first place, Loach focuses his gaze on the atrocities committed against the Iraqi people, the futility of tactics employed by the military and effect on the participants from both sides. Utilising his typical low-key cinematography and editing, as well as shocking archive footage from the middle-east, Loach has succeeded in, as he puts it, not adopting “the mannerisms of a thriller”, but producing “a straightforward piece of observation”. Watching Fergus completely unravel through guilt and impotence is a claustrophobic experience, and the unflashy development of a twisting narrative refreshing. An important, affecting film that deserves to be seen by more than it probably will be.