Mind Games

Overacted and filled with plot holes including one MAJOR one that's never addressed.

It's a good idea but let down by the stilted dialogue. Couldn't bear more than 20 minutes of it.

As a fan of British crime drama and police procedurals I clicked on this readily enough. Five minutes in was ready to turn it off but battled through hoping it would get better. Unfortunately it did not. With performances going from wooden to cringe inducing and over the top to the point it almost had me laughing. The story itself plods along and there are holes in the story which I will not go into to keep this spoiler free. It is predictable and the reveal of the killer and 'twist' ending holds no surprises. The dialogue and direction are also poor and this movie drags interminably. There is so much great British drama to choose from, this is not one of them.

Lynda La Plante's credentials in crime stories featuring strong female characters would be hard to improve on. Following her seminal "Prime Suspect", "Mind Games" is an intelligent and multi-faceted perspective on the role of the mind and the brain in investigation and in life. The central character (played by Fiona Shaw, without question one of the greatest actresses in the world) uses not just her professional psychological profiling qualifications to inform her work, but also draws on her own faith (the character was previously a Roman Catholic nun) to help her in understanding what the mind can do and what it cannot overcome. It is a magnificent film: exciting, original and quiet, with a uniformly excellent cast who bring a real freshness to the genre.

The Police bring in a criminal profiler, to help unravel a series of ritualistic murders, none of which seem to be connected.

I'm watching this for the first time twenty years after it was first transmitted, in my opinion it holds up really well. The scenario is a good one, it's very easy to spot that it's from the pen of Lynda la Plante, it has the five of Prime Suspect and Trial and Retribution.

Fiona Shaw, in my humble opinion, she's one of the best, outrageously talented, and of course she doesn't disappoint, even if the basic premise of the character ia a wee bit of a stretch, perhaps.

You can argue it looks a little dated, and perhaps some of the filming is a little clunky, but it's well paced, they present a gritty mystery, and they offer a very exciting ending.

What a shame they didn't develop the character any further.

Well worth watching, 9/10.