Five Minutes of Heaven

(Oliver Hirschbiegel):

Liam Neeson, James Nesbitt.

Running time: 90 minutes. (15A)

Rating: 2/5

Acclaimed German director Oliver Hirschbiegel's drama about Northern Ireland arrives here freighted with awards from Sundance. This two-hander, starring Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt, and written by Guy Hippert, sets out a worthy, even self-important stall: how can we learn to forgive after the Troubles in Northern Ireland?

But the film's demonstration of its subject is clunky and stagey. Nesbitt plays Joe. As a Catholic child he watched local protestant Alistair gun down his brother. Now the grown-up Alistair (Neeson) wants reconciliation. The effects on Joe's family were devastating and Joe naturally fights feelings of revenge – or 'five minutes of heaven'. The film's first reel, set in 1970s Lurgan, plays like a heist movie. It's expertly done: Hirschbiegel uses it to show the tragedy that occurs when explosive ideology is mixed with youthful stupidity. If only he had stopped there. What follows is un-dynamic and visually inert – a series of close-ups with jabbering voice-overs. Close your eyes and it would make a good radio play. Nesbitt is like an itch you can't scratch. When he's not hamming it up, he speaks in a manic voice-over that sounds like another TV commercial. Neeson's natural reticence and melancholy brings the right kind of heft to the film. His story, of how killers too carry their own kind of ghosts, is touching.