People can get things wrong. And people who are quite sure they're right can get things completely wrong. Beware the certainties of dogma. Roger Allam portrays a public atheist who sounds a bit like Richard Dawkins - except that he brings along some unappetising character flaws. Derek Jacobi is Father Enoch, a cleric who has decided that his God wants to suspend one of His own Commandments (number six, concerning homicide as you may recall). The end justifies the means.
Father Enoch has devoted about twenty years to bringing up two brothers who were abandoned when they were small children: Vic (Tom Brooke) and Tim (Harry Melling). Now he has an important assignment for his boys to do (it's the work of the Lord). Vic looks like he's cut out for this sort of thing, but Tim seems to lack the linear moral clarity of an effective fanatic - and maybe he's not very bright. If this is a story about one character, then that character is Tim, a lamb in wolf-world.
They go to work. But small mistakes can have unfortunate consequences. Now it looks as if the assignment is going to be more challenging than originally planned. The police are aware of death threats and are taking the usual precautions to protect Prof Huxley (Allam) at the Ilkley Literature Festival (yes, Ilkley, a town in Yorkshire, really does do these get-togethers for lit-lovers). Two guys of "middle-eastern" appearance have turned up to hear the keynote speaker - better keep an eye on them...
Life can be a muddle of sweet and sweat, pathos and pathetic, cliche and claptrap, hypocrisy and hypothetical, love and lewd. But will all these elements play together nicely to make a movie? Jamie Fraser (writer) and Harry Michell (writer and director) give it their best shot (some very nice touches, and also ingenious twists and turns), and they depend on the audience to not get too fidgety about how they're supposed to feel - is this tragedy, or comedic? We've seen plenty of work-worn cops on the screen (Anna Maxwell Martin on this occasion), but a splendid male choir - now that's different, and it really adds its own dimension of commentary to this film.
