FIGHTING WORDS
Spall, Meaney spar in political‘ Journey’
If you're a political junkie and loved such films as “Frost/ Nixon,” you're going to enjoy “The Journey,” a perhaps too-fictionalized bromance, featuring two of Britain's finest actors at their best. Protestant loyalist firebrand Ian Paisley (Timothy Spall) and Irish Republican, Roman Catholic and Sinn Fein politician Martin McGuinness (Colm Meaney) are mortal enemies from Northern Ireland when they are persuaded to meet and talk in Scotland at St. Andrews by British Prime Minister Tony Blair (an amusingly weaselly Toby Stephens) and his MI5 chief Harry Patterson (the late, great John Hurt).
Screenwriter Colin Bateman and TV veteran director Nick Hamm ask us to believe that Paisley and McGuinness would agree to ride together to Edinburgh airport so that Paisley, who once called the Pope the Antichrist, can catch a jet home for his 50th wedding anniversary and that Patterson would arrange for one of his young agents (Freddie Highmore) to be their driver in a van equipped with listening devices and a secret camera. Yes, that's a lot to swallow. But if you want to see two veteran masters going at each other hammer and tongs, you're going to have fun watching this as I did. As far as Paisley is concerned, McGuinness is a murderer with “blood on his hands” because of the shootings and bombings perpetrated by the Irish Republican Army. McGuinness, for his part, tries to explain the meaning of civil war and “freedom fighter” to the old fundamentalist Presbyterian to little avail. Meanwhile, McGuinness believes Paisley is a traitor who bows to the Queen of England and has no problem with British soldiers in Ireland gunning down Irish protesters on the infamous Bloody Sunday.
Spall (“the Harry Potter” films) goes positively De Niro as the stiff, spiffy 81-year-old Paisley, complete with wig, dentures and impressive weight loss. Meaney, formerly of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” is more recognizable by far as McGuinness. The film combines still photos of the real-life Paisley and McGuinness, who became known as “the chuckle brothers” after agreeing to a cease fire after 40 years of bloodshed. Some of the developments are going to make you question the film's credibility, especially when McGuinness disarms Highmore's adolescent secret agent. But these fine actors give you a genuine sense of the “hatred, thick as blood” that these real-life men had for each other and were asked to transcend, and the performances trump all the blarney.