Clive Owen: Sundance 2012: Clive Owen finds Troubles in 'Shadow Dancer' (EW)

by Jeff Labrecque

 

 

Casting Clive Owen as an MI5 operative in your movie is never a bad idea, but in Shadow Dancer, the taut British thriller about espionage and betrayal set during a spike of Irish/English violence in the early 1990s, Owen isn’t some gun-toting super-agent quick with a quip. Instead, he’s a middle-level field officer assigned with recruiting a captured Irish nationalist (W.E.’s Andrea Riseborough) — whose subway bomb failed to explode — to betray her family.

“I think it’s a great performance by Clive,” says director James Marsh, a Sundance fave after his heralded 2008 documentary, Man on Wire. “It’s something he doesn’t do enough of, in my view. It’s very understated and discreet what he’s doing in the film.

In Shadow Dancer, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival Tuesday night, Owen’s Mac and Riseborough’s Colette find themselves wary partners as the political ground shifts beneath them. “I love the dilemmas of the main characters,” says Owen. “He’s somebody who spends a long time reeling her in, and then develops a conscience when he realizes that his superiors are willing to sacrifice her. I thought it was a great conflict for a character.”


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