Although made with heartfelt sincerity, this is a grim and drab account of the repression of the Greek people in the postwar period. Neither is any insight offered into the political situation in Greece at the time, so that it's difficult to feel allegiance to one side or another, or indeed involvement of any kind. The flat and tedious narrative concerns a Greek-American newspaperman (John Malkovich) returning to his native land to hunt down those responsible for the unjust death by firing squad of his mother Eleni. In the title role, Kate Nelligan gives everything to a role that once would have been ideal for Sophia Loren or Irene Papas, and occasionally touches our hearts. The treatment of her story, however, is relentlessly sombre and one-dimensional. None of her children, for example, spring to life as characters in their own right, which is essential to the effect of the film's final stages.


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