Manipulative and sentimental but also affectionate: Belfast reviewed

After Artemis Fowl and Murder on the Orient Express you may have had concerns about Kenneth Branagh ever helming a film again — keep away, Ken, keep away! — but Belfast is plainly a different prospect. It is an autobiographical account of his earliest years growing up in Belfast during the Troubles, and it is heartfelt, warm and authentic even if it does sometimes tip into the overly sentimental and nostalgic. That said, it was good to see Omo washing powder once again. (It added ‘brightness to whiteness’, you may remember.)

Branagh, who wrote the screenplay and directs, was born in Belfast but moved to the south of England with his family when he was nine and this film asks what his parents must have asked themselves: how bad does it have to get before you leave everything and everyone you know? The film opens with drone shots of modern-day Belfast but then leaches into black and white as we spool back to 1969 and a working-class street where it’s clear everyone knows each other and the children are happily playing outside. It’s hopscotch or skipping or makeshift swords and shields and someone is on the receiving end of a Chinese burn somewhere, I bet you. (That, too, was very 1969.) Branagh’s alter ego is Buddy (a winsome Jude Hill) who has been called in for his tea and is teased on his way home. ‘It’s tripe and onions,’ jokes a neighbour. ‘It is not,’ insists Buddy. He suddenly freezes. His expression is stunned, wide-eyed. There, at the end of the road, stands a gang of snarling young men. We switch to slo-mo as they rampage down the street with baseball bats and petrol bombs. Windows shatter, cars are set alight, mothers scream as they race to scoop up their children.