Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan travels to Ireland and England, to follow a young Irish lass whose young lad has disgracefully enlisted in the British army as well as disgracefully gotten her pregnant. The lad's mother will not divulge his new address, and the lass's father is no help either ("You're carryin' the enemy within you"), but a perfect stranger across the water in England volunteers his services, as is his habit with needy young women whom he then habitually murders. The storytelling is carefully measured, even a little parsimonious, leaving the intermittent gap. (Where did the girl get the idea that her lover was working in a lawnmower factory? How did her helper get all those miles and miles of candid-camera video of his prey?) The raven-haired Elaine Cassidy, a fresh face, is to this movie what Sarah Polley was to the director's Sweet Hereafter, a touchingly well-behaved victim. But Bob Hoskins, too strange to be the "perfect" stranger, does not quite successfully shrink himself to the meek-and-mild dimensions of his role. Egoyan, seeker of lost souls, reaffirms his tastefulness and his high-mindedness by generating much more tedium than tension. He does provide the formal pleasures of smooth, steady camerawork and carefully composed shots of people in their environment. A cold dish, howsoever attractive in presentation. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd
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