On Low Key Spying with Shadow Dancer

Documentary filmmaker James Marsh turns his hand to dramatic fiction with an adaptation of Tom Bradby’s novel. Shadow Dancer is a spy thriller surrounding the war against the IRA in the 1990s. As recent spy films go, Shadow Dancer is low key and shares most in common with the slow paced, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2010) and like that film, Marsh’s is beautifully crafted and paced. Bourne and Bond can create suspense and thrills with action, Shadow Dancer does it with hidden threat made all the more dangerous because of the female spy and her family. The acting is all round fantastic with Andrea Riseborough standing out above the rest. The danger with a slow paced thriller is that naturally, the film should be moving towards a climatic ending, which is harder to achieve when the rest of the film has relied on a slower style. Shadow Dancer does this, but it feels rushed and we’re left with an anti-climax to an otherwise superb film.