In 1973, the life of a young Northern Irish girl named Collette is irrevocably changed by one violent act, which 20 years later sees her (now Andrea Riseborough) as an IRA operative planting a bomb in the London subway. Nabbed by the MI5, she finds herself negotiating with a detective (Clive Owen) about whether she’ll spend decades in prison or return home, to raise her young son, as a spy.
Director James Marsh (“Man on Wire,” “Project Nim”) turns his incisive gaze on this adaptation of Tom Bradby’s novel, with the help of a first-rate cast — Riseborough is intense, as are Domhnall Gleeson and Aidan Gillen as Collette’s hard-liner brothers.
Still, the proceedings move so quietly and thoughtfully as to be occasionally somnolent, though they’re punctuated with spasms of the violence that marked the Troubles. The particulars may be hazy for many American viewers, but they’ll recognize the universality of the way that both sides are far too quick to discard human lives in the service of dogma.