Hidden Agenda

Loach's film has the feel of a Costa-Gavras political thriller and a script by controversial Marxist Jim Allen. Despite its sometimes flailing conspiracy-theory narrative, and its upstaging by TV projects like Stalker, Death on the Rock and Who Bombed Birmingham?, this deserves to be seen simply because it takes the debate on Ireland further than most such docudramas, asking questions about the nature of the British presence and its effect on the mainland's justice system. The plot, based on both the Stalker and Colin Wallace affairs, concerns the murder of an American civil liberties campaigner by security forces, and the subsequent enquiry by Brian Cox's Stalker-style police officer which leads to the heart of the military and political establishment. Whatever one thinks of the political line on offer, there's plenty of evidence of Loach's undiminished power as a film-maker, and equally ample evidence that something is very rotten in the state of Northern Ireland.