No sooner does a full-color drone’s-eye-view offer up a glimpse of Belfast today, than we’re whisked over a fence and 50 years into a monochromatic past. For a city beset by civil war, it’s amazing how squeaky clean the streets look, as if set designers spent their evenings polishing each brick and curbstone. Everything is calculated so as not to challenge the easily engrossed: faces peer from windows like an advent calendar; an exploding auto is captured from four different angles; one slo-mo punch results in an artfully arching head, water spritzing from the mouth. And don’t give me any of this, “Good acting at its finest” nonsense. With Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds’ names in the credits you know damn well the acting will be first-rate. Alas, actors don’t make movies, directors do. It’s difficult to dramatize war from a child’s point-of-view without resorting to sentimentality, a fact that’s repeatedly illustrated throughout the picture. I have 3 words for writer/director Kenneth Branagh: Hope and Glory. (2021) — Scott Marks
This movie is not currently in theaters.