The first rule of political statesmanship is not to choose as your associates men whose names are Mad Dog and Cow Pat Keegan.

Robert Lindsay did not, evidently, read the rule book.

In the film version of Colin Bateman's novel, we find him as Michael Brinn, a politician with more secrets than Bill Clinton has interns, who stands on the brink of becoming Prime Minister of an independent state of Northern Ireland.

He is a politician in the American mould: a triumph of image over substance. "Some oilskin comes along with a full set of teeth and some trendy platitudes and everyone thinks, 'How refreshing - let's vote for him'."

It could have been written about almost any politician, but in this case it's a Smart Aleck newspaper columnist called Dan Starkey (David Thewlis) who's delivering the verdict on the oily Mr Brinn.

Starkey is a larger-than-life version of Bateman himself, a celebrity columnist (surely a contradiction in terms) whose time is fully occupied parrying advances from darkly intriguing women and deeply sinister men in dimly-lit and barely-remembered pubs.

Among his associates are the aforementioned Mad Dog and Cow Pat Keegan, and it's after a fling with the girlfriend of one of them (Laura Fraser) that he begins to make the connection with the Prime Minister in waiting.

Divorcing Jack is set in the Belfast of the very near future, but what could have been a credible and suspenseful political thriller is compromised by the author's apparent infatuation with the main character.

It's not that Thewlis is dislikeable as Starkey - quite the reverse, in fact - but the idea of a crime-busting newspaper columnist comes straight out of Boys' Own paper. The story badly needs credibility, and Starkey has none of it.

The result is that the film swings wildly between hip comedy, political intrigue and violent action. Undeniably, this is exhilarating at times, but it's also terribly uneven.

Those looking for an angle on the political process in the new Northern Ireland - other than a general and sage pointer that politicians of any colour are not to be trusted - have come to the wrong place.

David Behrens

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.