Ken Loach returns to the political arena with the taut, violent Route Irish, a cautionary tale about the privatization of modern war propelled by a riveting, intricately plotted mystery.
Ex-SAS private security contractor Fergus (Mark Womack) returns to Liverpool from Iraq to attend the funeral of his friend Frankie (John Bishop) who was killed on ‘Route Irish’, the dangerous road between Baghdad airport and the Green Zone. Fergus doesn’t accept the official story of his death, and discovers that a cell phone camera recording of a horrific shooting incident holds the key to the truth of why Frankie died.
Mark Womack’s Fergus is the ferocious heart of the film, and it is a stunning portrayal of a deeply traumatised man consumed with sorrow and anger over his experiences in Iraq and the loss of his best friend. Fergus channels his pain into a determination to get to the bottom of what really happened to Frankie, and to do so he must put himself and others at great risk by questioning colleagues in Iraq via skype and confronting officials of the private security firm that employs him. The plot is intriguingly complicated, but Loach and his long time collaborator screenwriter Paul Laverty are in firm control; the film moves along at a great clip while keeping us aware of who all the key players are and their roles in the conspiracy surrounding Frankie’s death as it unravels.
Key to all of this is Fergus, who operates as sort of a hard-boiled, Chandler-esque detective as he moves through Liverpool within his aura of seething, barely suppressed violence. Although director Loach disagreed with my reading of Fergus as a kind of Marlowe figure when I interviewed him this week, it’s an interesting way to look at his character, and an apt one on many levels. Fergus is deeply disturbed as a result of what he witnessed and took part in in Iraq both in and out of the military, and the only way he can express himself is through verbal (he shouts profanely for much of the film) and physical expressions of anger and violence. Like the investigator protagonists of post WWII film noir, who struggled to transition from the military and the horrors of combat back to civilian life, Fergus is psychologically scarred and deeply cynical, but retains a sense of honour and decency which keeps him moving forward in his quest for the truth, and for revenge.
As always with the work of Ken Loach, characterisation is key and there is a great supporting cast surrounding Womack’s Fergus. Frankie is only seen in a few flashback scenes, but comic Bishop effectively conveys the character’s charm and essential decency. Andrea Lowe as Frankie’s widow Rachel is both tough and vulnerable, a bereaved woman who feels a wealth of conflicting emotions towards Fergus including anger, distrust, and desire. Most interestingly, Kurdish singer and musician Talib Rasool, in the Loach tradition of using non-actors, has a small but important role as a musician with an IT day job who assists Fergus with translation and extracting data from the all important cell phone. He is deeply suspicious of Fergus’ motives and disgusted with the cell phone footage; he only grudgingly comes to trust him, in the end suffering harsh consequences (as do most of the men Fergus calls on for assistance) for becoming involved.
The filmmakers clearly have enormous empathy for former soldiers turned security contractors, while having nothing but contempt for the firms that employ and deploy them. While the work of these soldiers-for-hire is very well paid, they are viewed with distrust (if not contempt) by almost all whom they deal with, and when they return to their home countries suffering from post traumatic stress or physical injuries there is little or no support offered and they are not perceived as any sort of heroes. The company that employs Fergus and Frankie, represented by the slick senior managers that Fergus deals with, are aggressive corporate hacks keen to get out of Iraq and build a much bigger business running national infrastructures. This is the warning that Loach and Laverty ask us to heed; if corporate security firms are running prisons, policing and actual combat today, what services will our governments be farming out to corporations in the near future if we don’t put a stop to this form of privatization?
