We drop to a minor key for a cameo turn as a name dropping taxi driver in the under-valued Last of the High Kings, then see him as a nationalist hero in the controversial Michael Collins, before enjoying a return to full-blooded form with a preview of Trojan Eddie, in which Rea (above right) plays a bullied market hawker with a grudge against gypsy godfather Richard Harris – a spectrum of Irishness, and humanity, that never allows itself the laziness of cliche, nor the luxury of grandstanding. Here he is again, defected to the other side, as the on-the-run IRA man in the Oscar-winning The Crying Game, for Jordan again. Here’s his early, breakthrough performance as the repulsed, and finally vengeful witness to an IRA murder in Neil Jordan’s Angel. Stephen Rea has a grand total of five films in the Screen on the Green season, part of the Barbican’s forthcoming “From the Heart” festival (3 to 17 April) The very thought makes him moan “Five you say? Ach, God, no.” Ach, God, yes It’s almost a guided tour to his career highlights.

But Darth Vader remains an enduringly fearsome villain, and the climactic airborne showdown as the rebels attack the Death Star still gets the adrenalin flowing, even in these post-Top Gun days Nostalgia freaks will get the biggest kick.. The plot (pinched from John Ford’s classic western The Searchers), acting and characterisation are as creaky as ever, the saddest victims of the intervening years being the camp fussbudget C3PO and our whingeing hero Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). The 1977 space spectacular gets a re-release in this sparkling, digitally remastered version which boasts a few minutes of extra (though largely redundant) footage, and a big improvement in the special effects – after all, kids today aren’t impressed by robots and laser guns any more. One scene has Daffy Duck griping about not getting royalties for all the T-shirts and lunchboxes which feature his image, a joke which could only have worked if merchandising potential were an incidental part of the movie rather than its defining characteristic.By the closing minutes, even the nonsensical laws of cartoon logic to which the film has adhered have been contravened, so that a human character can explain away his presence in Looney Tune land simply by announcing “The producer’s a friend of mine”.Luckily, that character is played by Bill Murray, the seedy, ungainly, pock-marked comedian who can get away with anything, even having Space Jam on his CV.. When it tries to be hip about the business of spin-offs, it merely sounds vulgar. And Space Jam is nothing if not a product made by men who gauge a film’s success by how many soft toys it spawns. And it has to be said – he’s no Angela Lansbury.
David Falk maintains that Jordan “has the ability to become a major entertainment personality” But then he would say that He’s Jordan’s business manager.

Whereas the Disney film had an eccentric English witch interacting with her animated co-stars, Space Jam offers us the NBA hero Michael Jordan playing basketball with cartoon characters. Such bitterness is a bit rich considering that the movie is basically a feature-length remake of the football sequence from Disney’s own Bedknobs and Broomsticks, spruced up with some computer-generated effects and a soundtrack that’s uglier than a motorway pile-up. There are some blatant and spiteful swipes at Walt Disney in the children’s comedy Space Jam – at one point, Bugs Bunny stomps around berating “Mickey Mouse organisations”, while the movie’s villains are a gang of extra-terrestrial sycophants who want to kidnap Warner Bros cartoon characters to liven up their – get this – theme park. Mackinnon’s generous regard for his characters’ emotions is crucial, but John Keane’s splendid score also plays a significant part in suggesting a world beyond the frame, its woozy sax signature hinting at the picture’s hopeful flourishes. But once she has gone, Power clasps that dress in his hands like it’s a skin that she has shed, and Mackinnon finds a visual echo of it in a tatty net curtain flapping in a derelict caravan.The film’s use of repetition in imagery and camerawork creates a strong sense of constriction which is claustrophobic without ever being depressing.

It’s comic and touching to watch Kathleen walking in her wedding dress, ignoring the squelch of mud underfoot. Yet he can’t bring himself to be quite so enthusiastic about any of the three marriages which are depicted. The runaways don’t actually run very far, and Mackinnon is less keen to build toward their retribution than to catalogue the sadness of those left behind – Eddie, compromised by his knowledge of Dermot’s whereabouts, or Power, saddled with the indignity of spending his wedding night searching for his bride.Mackinnon uses unexpected colours to convey a certain tarnished glamour in the drab Irish locations, lingering over orange-tinted puddles standing in purple soil, or ensuring that there’s always an unexplained shaft of gold light spilling into the frame from somewhere. The hounded couple are Dermot and Kathleen (McGuckin), who, foolishly wait until Kathleen has wed John Power before making their escape with the dowry money But this isn’t True Romance.

Instead, notice how Mackinnon uses the blood-smeared reflection to capture the sight of life setting on one face, and remorse dawning on another – a single economical shot worthy, like the rest of this remarkable film, of comparison with Powell and Pressburger.See Stephen Rea interview, p9. The film’s prosaic brutality is constantly being supplanted by flashes of macabre lyricism which can require a little blind faith – when a man whose neck has been torn with a meat-hook is pressed against a mirror by his assailant, don’t be tempted to question whether a thug who makes such a careless mess is really in the right line of work. If violence apears out of nowhere, it also vanishes back into thin air just as fast. It’s also impeccably edited, with scenes planted to suggest odd, tangential moods rather than to drive the story forwards, while important plot-points can be disguised as inconsequential details.Mackinnon’s likes to ambush his audience, and that doesn’t just mean lulling us into a false sense of security.