Divorcing Jack – 1998 | 110mins | Comedy, Thriller | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Divorcing Jack was David Caffrey’s directorial debut, adapted by screenwriter Colin Bateman from his own novel. A black-comedy thriller set around the troubled ‘peace process’ in Northern Ireland and its effect on a cynical hack. Belfast 1999, on the eve of the country’s first election as an Independent state, past bogey men still linger on the political mane and old scores waiting to be settled. Dan Starkey (David Thewlis), a hard drinking, ageing, punk smart-arse and satirical newspaper columnist, finds himself embroiled in murder after walking through a park when he meets Margaret (Laura Fraser). He spends the night at her apartment, returning the next day to find her whispering “divorcing Jack” just before she dies from gunshot wounds. When Starkey becomes the suspect, he flees, accidentally killing Margaret’s mother.

Divorcing Jack is powered by an undercurrent of dark anger and filled with menacing, hard-won laughs. Turning in the same splendid performance he showed as Johnny in Mike Leigh‘s Naked, Thewlis’s Starkey gives the film its tough but wry core and battered resolve. Starkey is at the centre of an exhilaratingly eventful plot that includes death, sex, mayhem, q gun-toting kissagram nun (Rachel Griffiths), a cattle rustling terrorist and Robert Lindsay portraying the shady Prime Minister in waiting.

Screenwriter Colin Bateman was himself a satirical newspaper columnist when he wrote the novel (his debut) on which the film is based. For some the vinegary tones and insistence on prodding old pomposity’s may not sit well in the climate of Northern Ireland, well, sell seriousness is a problem that Divorcing Jack pricks it like a party balloon. The sick cruelty and the reality of the situation is not underplayed either, two of the most loveable and sympathetic characters are killed by the halfway point and Sharkey’s all embracing cynicism gives the film a jaundiced but worldly-wise viewpoint.