Rose's War (2023)

Rose's War (2023). 1h 38m

“Compelled to be presented to the Queen as a debutante in return for an Oxford University education, Rose Dugdale (Imogen Poots) rebels from a fairly early age. Her privileged upbringing – as so often happens – leads her to detest the very hands that fed her in her childhood. Meantime, the troubles in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s are only increasing and after a trip to a training camp in Cuba, she returns a fully capable, bomb-making, terrorist – with a brain and a conscience. A plot is devised to rob a stately home of some valuable Goya, Rubens and Vermeer paintings and hold them as hostage for £500,000 and the freedom of two hunger striking IRA prisoners incarcerated in the UK. What now ensues is a rather weekly constructed speculation as to just how this shrewd plan was executed and of the aftermath. The story is an interesting history – but with the timelines dancing around all over the place and the performance of Poots a bit hit or miss, I found the pace of the film too bitty. We are all too often left dangling when a storyline is being developed and talking of development, there is very little to inform us about who the real Dugdale was. The screenplay doesnu0026#39;t shy away from describing the radicalisation here nor of some of itu0026#39;s concomitant brutality but somehow her vitriolic detestation of the British state is left completely unexplained. This subject could make for a strong political documentary on a woman who was clearly dedicated to her cause, but as a drama – this doesnu0026#39;t ever really engage.”