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3 stars***
The film adaptation from the 1985 BBC series is a sure winner, especially if you haven’t seen the original series and you don’t mind a few plot holes.

What’s it about:

As homicide detective Thomas Craven investigates the death of his activist daughter, he uncovers not only her secret life, but a corporate cover-up and government collusion that attracts an agent tasked with cleaning up the evidence.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Mel Gibson in such convincing form, not that he’s been in poor movies, he’s just been taking a long rest. Fellow actor Ray Winstone continues to be near perfect in every movie he runs with. Yet again he plays a believable character who turns a full character arc without specifically telling us why, but we are shown why.

This movie uses the ‘show not tell’ method quite a lot. In fact, probably too much, as we painfully have to guess what might have been said in a conversation as the movie moves on quickly and we’re left guessing what happened. It’s only though later actions that we’re able to go back, Agatha Christie style, and find out what the clues might have been.

It almost like the 126 minutes isn’t enough and they really needed another 20 minutes to flesh out the details. Why do that when your audience can just guess what happened and hope they got it right?

This movie, with the screenplay written by William Monahan and Andrew Bovell from Troy Kennedy Martin’s BBC series, makes a really good read as a screenplay because you have the time to fill in the missing parts.

The end of the movie doesn’t agree with standard Hollywood issues. It doesn’t leave you having had all the pieces carefully tidied up so that the main story and the B story are concluded to your satisfaction. In fact, it leaves you wanting to know more but I doubt they’ll be a follow up as that would be an entirely different story and too many main characters won’t be able to present.

The movie isn’t a close run of ‘Taken.’ The stories bear very little resemblance. In reality it’s more like a mixture of Silkwood and any movie where the father takes revenge for his daughter’s death.

Despite everything, it was very enjoyable and most entertaining which is what I want from my ticket purchase and an evening at the cinema.