Irish director who has made a variety of international movies in between
return visits to his native country to direct films that often have
a fantasy slant and are constantly of a controversial and confrontational
nature. A musician in his younger days, Jordan played guitar and saxophone
in a band that travelled all over Ireland, although less to the north
after members of one band were shot and killed there by Protestant extremists.
Turning to writing short stories, then novels, Jordan became involved
with the film industry in his early thirties after working as script
consultant on John Boorman's Excalibur (1981). Jordan made a documentary
about his experiences and decided he would like to write and direct
for the medium. His first, Angel (1982), the first of six Jordan films
to star the lugubrious Irish actor Stephen Rea, was a contemporary black
thriller that reflected Jordan's own musical past, in that its hero
(Rea) was a saxophonist who becomes involved in avenging the murders
of two friends. A formidable debut, it was like a slice of Raymond Chandler
within a particularly desperate and abrasive Irish context.
Rea was also in The Company of Wolves (1984), a bold fantasy horror
tale that crosses werewolf films with Red Riding Hood. Jordan was uncommonly
successful here in creating a fairy-tale horror environment. Later came
Mona Lisa (1986),
a crime yarn in which the director turns London's underbelly into a
garish and nightmarish hell on earth. Jordan was unable to repeat the
impact of these films in subsequent years, until the unexpected success
of The Crying Game
(1992), an IRA drama with an ingenious sex twist to its central story.
Rea was again involved in this, as he has been in all Jordan's most
recent films. Interview with the Vampire (1994) was a largely disappointing
version of Anne Rice's novel, albeit with some striking moments, and
the director has since returned to his roots, with Michael Collins (1996)
, which was again about the IRA, and The Butcher (1997) which wasn't.
The latter again combines Jordan's worlds of fantasy in a striking and
fast-moving account of a tearaway Irish boy's descent from mischief
into mayhem and murder. Later came The
End of the Affair (1999),an old fashioned cinema weepie about adulterous
liaisons based on the Graham Greene novel.
