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Incendiary

3/10

Stars: Michelle Williams, Ewan McGregor, Matthew Macfadyen

Director: Sharon Maguire

A maudlin, dreary and leaden yarn about grief and loss. East End housewife Williams lives in a grim tower block (and her husband a bomb disposal officer?) where she dotes on her four-year-old son (Sidney Johnston), but is neglected by her overworked husband (Nicholas Greaves).

While her husband takes the boy to an Arsenal match, she invites her new beau (McGregor) back to the flat. In mid-bonk (would they really have the footy on during sex?), she's horrified to see the Arsenal stadium blown up by, it turns out, six suicide bombers. Panic-stricken, she rushes to the ground, only to find that her husband and son have been blown to smithereens.

The rest of the film consists of her mooning around, pretending her son is still alive, being propositioned by Macfadyen, as her husband's boss (he bonks her too), and befriending the son of one of the bombers as some sort of compensation for her own loss.

Williams does a pretty good English accent, and her acting's all right too. Co-stars Macfadyen and McGregor, however, can bring little to their cardboard roles, and director Maguire's script is awash with banalities ('At base we are all humans, and we understand human cost'). Shots of Williams smoking in a London pub suggest the film was made rather earlier than the copyright date would indicate.

David Quinlan

UK 2008. UK Distributor: Optimum. Technicolor.
100 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 1, Violence/Horror 1, Drugs 0, Swearing 1.

Review date: 19 Oct 2008