Good Vibrations

Not many people will have heard of Terri (with an 'i') Hooley, I hadn’t, but some will have heard of Good Vibrations. Good Vibrations was a record shop setup by Hooley. It was also the name of a record label he launched to help emerging Northern Irish bands and to him, Good Vibrations was his way of life.

The film ‘Good Vibrations’ is his story, a biopic of his life. Terri with an 'i' (Richard Dormer) lost an eye when he was a child but this didn’t hold him back and fitted with a glass eye, he opened his record shop on the most bombed half mile in Europe in late 1970's Belfast at the height of the troubles.

Hooley had seen his friends divide up along political and religious grounds as the troubles escalated. He never felt he belonged in either camp despite coming from a political involved family, having a communist leaning father who was an expert at losing elections.

Instead, inspired by the local band Rudi, part of the emerging punk scene, who seemed as oblivious to this religious divide as he was, he tried to bring these camps together using his passion for music. In an ever increasing amount of cigarettes, beer and brandy everything else falls by the wayside, including his long suffering wife Ruth (Jodie Whittaker). Considering the on screen scale of his consumption, it is amazing he is still alive today.

Hooley helps emerging punk bands like Rudi and another band he discovered, The Outcasts, record and distribute their music through his Good Vibrations shop, label and concert promotions.

Many thought he was mad and they’d be right. He was also possibly the worst business man ever born. Even when he fills the Ulster Hall for a concert he still makes a loss. Every so often he appears to be on the edge of a major breakthrough, only each time managing to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

When a certain Fergal Sharkey begs him to release a record by Sharkey’s band The Undertones, who were a far from punk looking outfit in jumpers their mothers must have bought for them. Hooley was initially reluctant, until he hears the record itself. 

He releases ‘Teenage Kicks’ on the Good Vibrations label and then hikes it all round London trying to get a major label interested. No one was but he did manage to get a copy to John Peel. Who played it not once but twice, in a row. The first time he’d ever done that. The Undertones were launched, Hooley wasn’t and again lost money.

Meanwhile Rudi and The Outcasts never hit the big time at all.

Film wise, the script could be pacier and there’s no real plot, it is more a montage of the key moments in Hooleys life but its informative and at times humorous. It is a film about the power of music and that music is of course excellent. 

To this day the record shop still exists, although it has closed and reopened many times.

Shadow Dancer

We haven't seen an IRA thriller in a while, at one point you couldn't move for them. ‘Shadow Dancer’ is set in Belfast in 1993, to the backdrop of the ongoing peace process which resulted in the IRA ceasefire the following year. First though, we rewind to 1973, when Collette McVey was but a little girl. When she offloads an errand to the shops on her little brother, he comes back dead, hit by a stray bullet in the street.

Fast forward twenty years and Collette (Andrea Riseborough) is in London about to plant a bomb on the underground. Only, the authorities are on to her and she gets captured. They have enough information to put her away, where she will lose her son or, they tell her, she could become an informant and work for MI5.

She agrees, way too easily, which is one of a few things that are wrong with an otherwise impressive film. A lot of things seem a little too easy, not only is Colette easily turned into an informant but back in Belfast, although they are instantly suspicious of her return, particularly as CCTV coverage of her had featured on the TV News but nobody makes too much of it. They certainly don’t think to follow her to her regular meetings with Mac (Clive Owen) her MI5 handler. Perhaps because most of these meetings seem to happen in the pouring rain.

There is good tension in the film though. Gerry, the local IRA commander, is the one man who is suspicious. He knows there’s an informant in their midst and will happily use a little water torture on Colette’s brother to find out if it’s her. Possibly Gerry’s character and his role could have been developed further but the film doesn’t really dip into the politics of the situation and the full horrors of terrorism are largely absent from the screen.

The film prefers instead to pinpoint the distrust and paranoia on both sides. Whereas Colette has to betray her own side and family, Mac has his own problems, Gillian Anderson. Anderson appears briefly as a senior MI5 Officer putting obstacles in Mac’s path as she keeps him in the dark as regards the bigger picture in infiltrating this particular IRA cell. He starts to feel responsible for Colette when it becomes apparent she is just a decoy to take the heat off their main informant.

It's a good film, intelligent, suspenseful and well-acted. Riseborough is excellent and even Owen is sort of ok. It's just lacking in a bit of extra oomph.