Film Review: The Journey

You know the drill. Two distinct and completely contrasting characters end up on a roadtrip together. Initially they hate each other, then they begin to banter and bond, before coming to a grudging respect and even – dare we say it – affection.

Sometimes it’s a respectable businessman and a wayward drifter, sometimes it’s an estranged mother and daughter, and sometimes it’s the founder of the DUP and a veteran leader of the IRA.

Screeching brakes.

Wait, what?

Written by Colin Bateman and directed by Nick Hamm, The Journey is a fictional take on an imaginary car journey during the St. Andrew’s peace summit in Scotland in 2006. Ian Paisley (Timothy Spall) leaves the talks to attend a 50th wedding anniversary, but summit rules state that leaders should travel together so that neither can be singled out for attack. Paisley and Martin McGuinness (Colm Meaney) thus find themselves stuck together in a car for over an hour, unaware that their baby-faced driver (Freddie Highmore) is an undercover agent, and the car is rigged with hidden cameras so that MI5 agent (John Hurt) can monitor their conversation.

Hurt’s role is actually the film’s biggest hindrance, tasked with giving laboured and reductive summaries of The Troubles and The Importance Of It All. The clumsy earnestness of his speeches clashes with the often bizarrely light tone in the car. The question of how these two mortal enemies came to view each other as human beings and happily worked together is an intriguing one, but Bateman’s screenplay plays out like a rom-com seduction, as Meaney woos Paisley with cheeky jokes (“You’re married 50 years? Sure you’d get less for murder… ahem.”).

Paired with the script, Meaney’s earthy charm can lack gravitas, making later emotional reveals feel unearned. Spall’s portrait of Paisley is fascinating, all glowering energy that carries the film through its awkward contrivances. He is the one cinematic element in a radio drama-esque, overly safe project about explosive characters.