Behold: a film about the Troubles that isn’t about a former sectarian soldier coaxed back into the fold because yadda yadda yadda. The Truth Commissioner has ambitions to be a Tony Gilroy political thriller and while it’s reasonably solid fare this adaptation of David Parks’ novel can all be a bit stiff at times.
Diplomat Henry Stanfield (Allam) has been appointed truth commissioner to Northern Ireland as Stormont begins to investigate stories and give closure to the families of those killed under by Loyalists and Republicans. But truth is a dangerous thing. Michael Madden (Ward) returns from Boston to testify in the case of Conor Roache (Ciaran Flynn), a fifteen-year-old alleged informer kidnapped and murdered in the early nineties. Although playing a small role in the boy’s death, Madden is set to be the fall guy to protect the involvement of Francis Gilroy (McGinley), the current Sinn Fein minister. Meanwhile the Sinn Fein’s Director of Communications (Conleth Hill), in cahoots with MI5 (Tom Goodman-Hill), pulls strings and puts Stanfield under pressure not to call Gilroy whom Dublin and London believe to be the man to help the Peace Process through its early days.
Despite being the heart of the film Allam looks detached and unmoved by the goings on. Then he is playing a tough character who is been pulled emotionally this way and that – he’s under pressure from the PM to do a job; there’s the guilt of leaving an ill wife and struggling to work his way back into the life of his estranged pregnant daughter (Jasmine Hynde); and he must keep himself together when there is a thinly veiled threat on her life. On top of that there’s the political chicanery at hand, he doesn’t know if he can trust his PA (Madeleine Mantock), who is too cosy with Goodman-Hill’s spy, and, lonely, he’s fallen for Krystal (Klara Issova). It’s a lot to juggle and Allam, in funnelling all these disparate emotions, comes out the other end the picture of stoicism. This is problematic when he’s our way into the story and one is left observing rather than feeling.
But Eoin O’Callaghan’s script comes good when it gets down to the nitty gritty of the case and Conor’s mother (a solid turn from Simone Kirby) is allowed to address the witnesses called. The flashbacks to the Roache’s kidnapping and torture are tense stuff and Conleth Hill and Tom Goodman-Hill, the shadowy, behind-the-scenes real power of Northern Ireland, are an ominous presence throughout.
A slow burner that belatedly lets loose, The Truth Commissioner’s cold detachment ultimately stalls real involvement.
