DVD Review: Incendiary

By Ed Grant -- Video Business, 5/4/2009

THINKFILM/IMAGE
Street: May 5
Prebook: now
> Michelle Williams suffers superbly in this poorly scripted tearjerker.

Michelle Williams gives an impassioned lead performance in this earnest but often absurd tearjerker. She plays a Cockney-accented English woman who loses her husband and son to a terrorist bombing at a soccer match. The fact that she is cheating on her hubby at the time of the match—and that she and her lover (Ewan McGregor) see the explosion live on TV while making love—is the first of many coincidences that make up the film’s story line. Scripter-director Sharon Maguire (Bridget Jones’s Diary) piles on the contrivances, but Williams somehow manages to be convincing as she suffers.

Shelf Talk: Incendiary qualifies as an unabashed “chick flick” that happens to have a contemporary political theme. The curious will rent it based on the presence of McGregor and Williams, who very recently received excellent reviews for her work in Wendy and Lucy.

Drama, color, R (sexual situations, strong language), 96 min., DVD $27.98
Extras: none
Director: Sharon Maguire
First Run: DVD premiere