Nick Hamm’s historical fantasy The Journey is based on a real-life incident that took place near the end of the decades-long civil conflict between Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists in Northern Ireland. In October 2006 the British and Irish governments, along with the major political parties in Northern Ireland, convened in Saint Andrews, Scotland, to hammer out a power-sharing arrangement between the Democratic Unionist Party, led by the fire-breathing Protestant minister Ian Paisley, and Sinn Féin, the left-leaning Irish republican party. During the negotiations, Paisley was permitted to fly home to Ulster for an evening to celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary, and as a security protocol (to protect his plane from a possible ground-to-air attack), he was accompanied by Martin McGuinness, a leader of Sinn Féin and a former chief of staff for the Irish Republican Army.
I’m not a big fan of fictionalized history like this—it only encourages people to fictionalize the present—but at least Hamm is up-front about the matter, explaining in the opening title that the whole movie is a big what-if. Instead of letting Paisley and McGuinness sit silently in a private jet, Bateman has invented a brewing storm in Saint Andrews that forces them to travel by chauffeured car to the Edinburgh airport, and then car trouble so they can get out, stroll around the forest, and argue amid the gravestones of a local cemetery. Unbeknownst to them, their fresh-faced driver (Freddie Highmore) is really an MI6 agent keeping an eye on them, and a hidden camera broadcasts their conversation to a flat screen in a little command center, where it’s monitored by a veteran Anglo-Irish diplomat named Harry Patterson (the late, great John Hurt) as well as Gerry Adams, Ian Paisley Jr., Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern, and a comically fretful and feckless version of British prime minister Tony Blair.
Directed by Nick Hamm
