By When war is privatised, it becomes hidden. Deceased soldiers are no longer honoured with a military ceremony commemorating the service they gave to their country, but sent home in a crate. So said director Ken Loach during the Q&A that followed the screening of his latest film at the London Film Festival. Route Irish, a thriller named after the ‘most dangerous road in the world’ connecting Baghdad Airport to the Green Zone, aims its anger at the privatised security contractors who have played such a controversial role in the Iraq war and the consequences of waging such a conflict both on civilians caught on the battlefield and those back at home.
When war is privatised, it becomes hidden. Deceased soldiers are no longer honoured with a military ceremony commemorating the service they gave to their country, but sent home in a crate. So said director Ken Loach during the Q&A that followed the screening of his latest film at the London Film Festival. Route Irish, a thriller named after the ‘most dangerous road in the world’ connecting Baghdad Airport to the Green Zone, aims its anger at the privatised security contractors who have played such a controversial role in the Iraq war and the consequences of waging such a conflict both on civilians caught on the battlefield and those back at home.{{page_break}}
The film finds Loach in more approachable form than the arthouse fare he is usually associated with. His eye is definitely on the mainstream this time around and with good reason: the questions raised are current and need to be considered by the wider population of any country – especially the UK and US – which played a part in the Second Gulf War. The question Loach posed to his audience after the film was: what do we do with the knowledge of what happened during the war? A major problem that the conflict has turned up in Western democracy is that we must assume responsibility for and cannot walk away from the terrible crimes that were committed in our name, yet have no avenue through which to act or remedy the situation, given as it was our governments who initiated the war in the first place.
We experience the story through the eyes of Fergus, a contracted soldier (or mercenary, as the Iraqis label them) who returns to his home city of Liverpool for the funeral of childhood friend Frankie, who died in a skirmish on the Baghdad streets. The more questions Fergus asks of the Frankie’s contractor employers, the more suspicious he becomes of the circumstances of his friend’s death. His doubts are exacerbated when he receives a posthumous package containing a telephone that has recorded footage from the battle. With the help of former comrades still stationed in Iraq and a dignified Iraqi expat acting as reluctant translator, Fergus begins to piece together a series of events that increasingly shift responsibility for Frankie’s death to ever more powerful people. This is Get Carter for the post-9/11 generation, sharing many similarities in story (replacing gangs with private contractors) and location (an overcast northern English city), but with Michael Caine’s playful Cockney charisma burnt down to Fergus’ seething fury, which he is barely able to control. We have seen plenty of Iraq war dramas in recent years, but few as personal or angry as this.
The film shifts between the central storyline and character subplots. Fergus’ investigation into Frankie’s death changes direction often enough to stay interesting, but never pulls any big surprises. It’s clear from the film’s themes who will ultimately be found responsible, but discovering the hows and whys taps into the conspiracy theory vibe that has been successfully mined for exciting drama before and is again here. There is a little too much staring at screens and phones, but Loach’s intercutting of real-life footage of civilian massacres in Baghdad grounds Fergus’ endeavours in the context of reality. It reminds us that while we must mourn our fallen soldiers and be vigilant in taking action against those who sent them to their needless deaths, Iraqi civilians trapped in the city under siege perhaps suffered worst of all while we were safe at home, watching on our televisions.
Fergus’ deteriorating mental state emphasizes the dangers of placing shell-shocked soldiers back into everyday life without proper care. As this becomes clear, his judgment of the situation turns increasingly questionable. The actions he takes in his bid to avenge a wrong turn his own morals ever less distinguishable from those of the people he is fighting against. It becomes increasingly uncomfortable to side with this man as he steadily becomes more extreme, culminating with him literally bringing the war home against those he deems ultimately responsible in a masterpiece of a visual cue from Loach.
While the character subplots successfully deepen the themes and consequences of Fergus’ investigation, they are less successful in their own right and add considerable flab to the film’s middle act. Fergus’ on-off romance with Frankie’s old girlfriend Rachel shows his difficulty in settling back into civilian life, echoed in visits to the large flat paid for with contractor wages yet decorated in sparse living conditions reminiscent of a military tent, but feel superfluous on a narrative level. His relationships with reacquainted military contacts and an Iraqi translator do little more than present a single aspect of the difficult wartime experience (a blind ex-soldier, played by real blind soldier Craig Lundberg; the translator furious at British troops’ lack of care for locals) without growing them into substantial arguments in their own right. The cumulative screen time dedicated to these relationships is not justified by a sufficiently satisfying payoff in either story or theme.
Perhaps most disappointing are the performances. Mark Womack conveys the emotion needed for each scene, but apart from a harsh stare doesn’t convincingly relay Fergus’ inner turmoil until it bursts forth at the end. Adhering to his long-held tradition, Loach refused the actors access to the script in advance of filming their scenes (leading to entertaining anecdotes in the Q&A as John Bishop joked about the cast’s speculation over who was going to die and when), which was perhaps the reason for this lack of consistency. Andrea Lowe does what she can with Rachel, but the character never feels fully developed beyond the grieving girlfriend outline and she shares scant chemistry with Womack. John Bishop, best known in the UK as a comedian, has the charisma to make an impact as Frankie, but his scenes are brief and short in number. The corporate suits, meanwhile, are as identical as they’ve ever been in any film of this type – charming, but immoral.
A late question from an audience member pointed out the similarity between Route Irish and The Pipe, a documentary screened earlier in the Festival (review here) which also raised questions about the failures of modern democracies to care for the needs and consider the long-term consequences of its decisions on its people. Loach’s film is sometimes too angry for its own good, forcing scenes into the story for the purposes of making a point and resulting in a sometimes choppy narrative, but that passion also makes for an engrossing and powerful thriller that has a chance of finding the wider audience it is looking for. By Loach’s standards this is a lesser work, with unusually sketchy character writing and performances, but is an engaging and challenging polemic in its own right.