The IRA thriller gets a few new twists here, but ironically it's the twists that fragment the film until it falls apart. Things start strongly: black British soldier (Hollywood's Forest Whitaker with a fair London accent) is captured by IRA fighters Stephen Rea, Adrian Dunbar and Miranda Richardson and held hostage. Subsequent developments, after Rea and Whitaker become almost-friends, hit home hard and it's only when Rea tracks down Whitaker's girlfriend (Jaye Davidson) in London that the film starts to go to pieces. It's not only in the relationship between Rea and Davidson that credibility takes a beating, but in several other key plot developments, to which Jordan's own dialogue can't lend conviction. Rea looks miserable about people of different sexes throwing themselves at him, as well he might: and there are some strange wobbles in the lighting towards the end as well as in the script. Richardson is fine and her Belfast accent sounds right. Davidson is almost convincing but (despite the Oscar nomination) never quite. A strange hybrid that's a cinematic curio: a titan, though, at the US box-office.

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