Press Archive

This is London
23 January 2007
by Larushka Ivan-Zadeh
Source

Keane
Soda Pictures, 15, £19.99
****

Parents beware – forget bogeymen such as Freddy Krueger; here is your worst nightmare. Damian Lewis is upsettingly superb as William Keane, a deranged father who obsessively haunts the New York Port Authority Bus Terminal each day, scanning crowds for his missing six-year-old daughter. Was it her abduction that drove him mad from grief, or guilt?

Did she exist at all? Director Lodge Kerrigan locks the camera tight on Lewis’s face, meaning we feel enclosed within the claustrophobia of his loss; dragged relentlessly through his self-destructive spiral of toilet sex and drugs. Until cash-strapped young mum Amy Ryan and her seven-year-old daughter arrive at his motel, promising hope of redemption. A hard watch – but worth it.

Extras: Executive producer Steven Soderbergh’s alternative cut.