Divorcing Jack

1998

Laura Fraser film clip (collage below)

Scoop's notes:

A surprisingly good film for a low-budget UK indie you never heard of.

"Divorcing Jack" is a sometimes hilarious, sometimes thrilling, sometimes touching story about a journalist in big trouble in a scary environment. David Thewlis stars as Dan Starkey, a perpetually drunk satire columnist for a Belfast newspaper. Not a low-risk job, by any means. The IRA terrorists are not generally well known for their ability to take a joke. In fact, nobody in Belfast seems to find anything in politics funny except Starkey. And nobody cares much for his little jokes.

As the complex action begins, he's somehow managed to pick up a really great looking student on his way home to a party. His wife doesn't really appreciate the interaction between Starkey and the student, so she kicks his butt out of the house, which of course force-kicks him squarely into the student's apartment. And this is no ordinary student. Her dad is an important industrialist, and her ex-boyfriend is a terrorist who is in prison for several murders, but Starkey and the student get along very well in a world of their own

The columnist and the girlfriend get hungry after a bout of lovemaking, so he goes out for pizza. When he returns, the apartment has been fragged and the girl has been brutally murdered. Then he accidentally kills her mother when he thinks she is the escaping murderer. So now he is the main suspect in a double murder and he doesn't have any friends in town. He has taken public potshots at the law enforcement officers, politicians, terrorists, and extremists on both sides. There isn't a Catholic or a Protestant in the whole country who cares whether Starkey goes to jail or, for that matter, to hell.

I really like this movie. It is fast-paced and funny; it is a good thriller; it is touching; it is political; it even has stylized mob-type violence. It is about the pain of northern Ireland, and the cynics who exploited that pain. It is about love and betrayal, war and peace and fun.

And journalist Dan Starkey ends up the film by telling the Queen to go fuck herself. Ya gotta love that.