Route Irish

Movies on DVD have to overwhelm their viewers, compel them to sit like an obedient dog, panting, unwilling to let their gaze wander. Route Irish did that with an intensely intriguing 10-minute first "act" showing a man of Irish-accented mystery in Liverpool coping with the bombing death of his best friend in Iraq. Then, mercifully it feels, director Ken Loach and his regular screenwriting associate, Paul Laverty, give their audience a breather, cutting to a crowded pub setting.

Unfortunately it's a cut not to the quick but the cliched, in yet another of the creative pair's polemical docudramatics. Their very unlikeable foul-mouthed anti-hero (Mark Womack) is a retired soldier who became a mercenary "contractor" in Iraq and invited his best childhood friend to join him there. The pal sees a manic colleague shoot up a taxi, killing a family of four and a couple of kids, and then the pal and his team members die when an IED explodes on "Route Irish", the dangerous road linking Baghdad's Green Zone and airport. The anti-hero and his pal's widow join vengeful forces (and unhappy bodies) to find truth and justice.

Loach, who's retained his socialist beliefs during more than four decades of movie-making, hired other favourite veteran talents including cameraman Chris Menges and composer George Fenton. As usual, the Loach-Laverty team employed little-known local actors to add the required air of cine-reality (and consequent amateur theatricals) and wove archive newsreel and emotional dialogue to illustrate blood-thirstiness by Allied forces and insurgents alike. There are some striking camera shots, telling narrative moments and effective editing, but the overall effect is yawnfully uninvolving. The promise of the initial setting evaporates.