Claire Foy holding a hawk on her gloved hand in a rural setting.
Claire Foy as Helen in ‘H is for Hawk’Credit: AP
 

Claire Foy and Brendan Gleeson in a scene from "H is for Hawk."
Helen is grieving following the death of her beloved father, award-winning photographer Alisdair Macdonald (Brendan Gleeson)Credit: AP
GRIEF is a complicated beast of an emotion and one us humans still haven’t found a cure for.

Which is why many often react by making life- changing decisions in the heat of the heartache.

Helen (Claire Foy) is one of those.

After her beloved father, award-winning photographer Alisdair Macdonald (Brendan Gleeson) dies suddenly, the Cambridge professor’s life is thrown into disarray.

Helen, who idolised her dad, goes down the classic route of drowning her sorrows and finding ill-advised lovers.

Perfect flatmate

Describing her dad as “the only person who really knows me”, we are shown flashbacks of the pair bird- watching from a young age.

It is a joint passion and big part of their relationship.

So, having moved on from hangovers, Helen decides that a bird would be the perfect flatmate.

But not just any bird. A goshawk, known as ‘the phantom of the forest’ and a steely killer.

Helen buys the goshawk in a deserted car park for cash and whimsically names it Mabel.

Soon her house is a daylight-free bird sanctuary with newspaper on the floor and raw meat on every sideboard.

Her friends and family worry about Helen, as the bird becomes her only concern.

She stops working to stay with Mabel and even brings her to social events, cutting herself off from interacting with many human beings.

Helen and Mabel descend into squalor together.

And while Mabel becomes stronger and more powerful, Helen crumbles further into depression.

Foy is obviously doing all the bird-handling for real and totally immerses herself in the part.

To do so, there must have been a remarkable amount of training and trust between her and this bird of prey that looks like it weighs a ton on her arm.

The flashback scenes between Foy and Gleeson are incredibly natural and the casualness of their special relationship shines through the screen.

The words between them are casual and fun, but it is as though they have their own special dialogue.

Based on the bestselling book of the same name by Helen Macdonald about her own experience, this beautiful and heartbreaking film portrays with exquisite class the disarray that unrelenting grief brings to people’s lives.

THERE has rarely been a dull moment with football hardman Roy Keane, either on or off the pitch.

Having launched into plenty of reckless tackles at Manchester United, he’s now scything through the game as a pundit with putdowns such as, “If Liverpool were playing in my back garden, I wouldn’t watch them”.

So his career controversy high-point – quitting Ireland’s World Cup squad in 2002 – had the potential for great entertainment.

And when Irish actor Eanna Hardwicke shows Keane speaking his mind, this comic drama amuses.

But Saipan, which takes its title from the island where Ireland warmed up for the tournament, is just as much about the team’s then- manager, Mick McCarthy.

Steve Coogan plays Big Mick, a confident man in real life, as a tongue-tied henpecked mess who fears Keane. If Coogan was acting in my garden, I’d close the curtains.

There would have been far more drama if the strong- willed pair had gone head-to-head on screen.

Fun as it is, Saipan doesn’t have enough to sustain a 90- minute movie. By the final whistle, I was wondering what all the fuss was about.

GRANT ROLLINGS

MERCY

(12A) 101mins

★★★☆☆

Chris Pratt as a character in the film "Mercy" with his hands restrained to a chair.
Chris Pratt stars in this adrenaline-fuelled tale about an AI courtroom where everyone is assumed guilty until proven innocentCredit: AP
GAMERS will love this adrenaline-fuelled tale screened in 3D about an AI courtroom where everyone is assumed guilty until proven innocent.

Chris Raven (Chris Pratt) is an LAPD officer who awakes, hungover, to find himself secured in the sentencing chair.

He is on trial at the so-called Mercy Court for the murder of his wife and, as a digital clock ticks down, he has just under two hours to convince automated Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson) he is not guilty.

In this justice system, there’s no lawyer to defend him, no jury to decide his fate.

He can use only hard evidence and truths to enable his acquittal.
If he fails, the seat he’s strapped into will execute him immediately.

The action is mainly confined to the courtroom but director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) keeps the tempo up.

There is enough tension to keep you invested as breakaways to body-cam recordings and calls to a fellow officer enable Det Raven to piece together what happened.