Hidden Agenda

Aroview: Perhaps dir. Loach’s most genre-based film, this political thriller about sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s involves two US Amnesty International journalists investigating British Army brutalities.

When one of the Americans (Brad Dourif) is shot on the side of the road in murky circumstances, partner Frances McDormand teams with English policeman Brian Cox in getting to the bottom of the controversy (and conspiracy). Adding keen melodrama to its own not-so-hidden humanist agenda, this certainly benefits from a gritty sense of location and Loach’s ‘listen-first-then-decide' style of polemic.

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