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Movies & TV

>>> The Journey

SPEC D: Nick Hamm. UK. 94 min. Sep 17, 12:15 pm, Scotiabank 4. Rating: NNNN


 A key moment in British politics is dramatized in The Journey, which imagines a car ride as the event that led rival leaders Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness to the 2006 St. Andrews Agreement, which ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland.

Timothy Spall plays the ferocious Paisley, while Colm Meaney is the more easygoing McGuinness, who were forced to confront one another (and their issues) during a minivan trip to Edinburgh to catch a flight back to Belfast. Their driver was a British agent (Freddie Highmore) charged with monitoring their conversation to Tony Blair (Toby Stephens) and an MI-5 expert (John Hurt).

The bulk of the film plays out as conversation, with McGuinness and Paisley taking one another’s measure and prodding at old wounds inflicted decades earlier. By framing it as a road movie, Hamm and screenwriter Colin Bateman undercut the potential stuffiness of the material and just let their actors play.

And both leads are superb, though Stephens is also wonderful in the corners as the equivocating, self-serving Blair.

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