Writers: Ronan Bennett, Charles Guard and Thomas Guard
Director: Charles Guard and Thomas Guard
Coming to Sky Cinema this week, Charles Guard and Thomas Guard’s Dead Shot is an ambiguous tale about the IRA campaign in London in the 1970s that is never quite sure whose side it wants to be on. The idea is that there is guilt and responsibility at all levels on all sides as both the central antagonists, O’Hara an Irish paramilitary operative and Tempest, a British SAS soldier, face personal and professional consequences. But Guard and Guard’s film seems less clear about it wants to say as a result and feels instead like an old-fashioned inconclusive thriller.
When British Soldier Henry kills the pregnant wife of former IRA man O’Hara, he is rescued from a murder charge by the cool and collected MI5 man who draws him into secret operation to flush out enemy agents targeting London. Meanwhile, O’Hara is out for revenge and calls on the services of his former associate and handler to help him track down his wife’s killer, only O’Hara has a few jobs for him to perform first that also take him to London where his vendetta threatens the whole campaign.
Dead Shot turns out to be a cat and mouse tale of two wily opponents both facilitated and restrained by the larger organisations in which they work, and the film has a lot of the elements it needs for success including a meaty backstory for its protagonists, a few set piece showdowns, sinister bosses operating a political agenda at the senior level and lots of shadowy meeting in cars, alleyways and a launderette. All of this is underpinned by love stories on both sides that make O’Hara and Tempest more rounded as well as explaining the threat to those who care for them when their occupation bleeds into the home life.
And in principle, Guard and Guard’s focus on the culpability on both sides for the violence in this era and the activities that escalate tensions is a reasonable and balanced one. But it doesn’t always feel balanced in watching the film as the narrative swings back and forth between the leads who are largely on separate tracks and only come together occasionally. The circumstances of O’Hara’s personal anguish drive the story but as he becomes enmeshed in IRA activities once more, that trajectory is muddied. Likewise, Henry is given equal space in a drama in which he is seen to murder an unarmed woman in labour and then avoid taking responsibility for it. So, it is difficult to invest in the theatrics knowing he cannot be redeemed regardless. There are no heroes in places like this but there has to be some reason to want him to succeed or the story does not work.
Sky has assembled a pretty impressive cast however, led by Colin Morgan as the troubled O’Hara who presents a man torn by love and grief but struggling with the consequences he unleashes. It is a weakness brilliantly exploited by a superbly menacing Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as O’Hara’s handler who drives his own agenda aided in London by Felicity Jones in a small but meaningful role. On the British side, Aml Ameen’s Tempset is a solid action hero egged on by a calmly sinister Mark Strong – oh how a scene between Strong and Vaughan-Lawlor would have bolstered this film.
Ultimately Dead Shot is too short to fully explore the complexities it tries to investigate and at only 85-minutes becomes formulaic instead. 70s London looks fantastic in Mattias Rudh’s cinematography but like so many films about this era, it only scratches the surface of what could have been a fascinating miniseries.
Dead Shot will premiere on Sky Cinema on 12 May.
