The Diplomat

THE DIPLOMAT (DVD)
Showbox Media Group 

Release date: March 14th 2011
Certificate (UK): 15
Running time: 180 minutes

Director: Peter Andrikidis

Cast: Dougray Scott, Rachael Blake, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Richard Roxburgh, Claire Forlani

The Diplomat was originally released in Australia as False Witness, a TV Film. The story focuses on Ian Porter (Dougray Scott), a British diplomat working as a double agent to take down the Russian mafia.

The DVD is split into two sections: ‘Night 1’ and ‘Night 2’ each approx 90 minutes to make the full mini-series.

The pace of The Diplomat is the most striking part of the film. It is a sight to behold. It doesn’t wait around for anyone – especially not the viewer. There’s a twist, then action, after a fight, before a twist, then an explosion, before you have time to learn any of the character names.

There isn’t a dull moment throughout the film, and any of the slower scenes are inevitably followed up with violence or another plot twist.

But there are some real problems with it that can’t be avoided. The action scenes are cluttered and rushed, and the fast pace of the film prevent any kind of depth to the characters. Even the gratuitous flashbacks don’t bring about much sympathy for Porter or his wife Pippa (Claire Forlani). Flashbacks are one of a few overused editing techniques, among others that include slow motion and unnecessary, repeated clips of London.

The Diplomat is peppered with the occasional genuine moment of sadness, particularly in the second half where Porter’s motives become clearer, and he is more vulnerable.

But for the body of the film, the quick cross cutting between locations and characters don’t give the actors much chance to breathe in their own scenes or explore what they were up against.

Following on from this, the fundamental problem with The Diplomat is that it tries to do too many things at once. Despite having three hours devoted to the story, the amount of ground it tries to cover is astonishing.

The basic plot has a lot of promise, but there are so many unnecessarily little tangents which detract from the story. It moves so fast and there are so many small back-stories to remember that it is easy to lose interest in the main characters.

The DVD extras included a series of interviews with actors and cast members which offer a behind the scenes peak into the production of the film. As always it is surprising to hear actors with their actual accents and how they understand their own roles, but there isn’t anything groundbreaking in terms of content.

There are some solid performances in The Diplomat – particularly Claire Forlani as Pippa Porter and Richard Roxburgh as Charles Van Koors – which bring up the quality of the film but on the whole it is just too fast.

It struggles to get to the heart of what it is trying to achieve because it moves from scene to scene in its attempt to get in as many characters and cover as many themes as is humanly possible.

Jack Murphy

Jack is an English Literature student in his early Twenties (The Golden Age!) at the University of Leeds. He insists on saying that he’s originally from Slough, Berkshire which is the setting of Ricky Gervais’ comedy series The Office – and not a day goes by that he’s not reminded of that fact… Irrespective of being mocked for it, Jack still is, and will most likely remain, a big Gervais fan.

And he sure knows how to spend his time. Having subscribed to a well known DVD delivery service for the past three years, Jack spends half of his days watching DVDs – and the other half on catch-up websites watching TV programmes.

Blu-ray & DVD

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