"Some Mother's Son's (15s) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin

In their first screenwriting collaboration, Jim Sheridan and Terry George movingly depicted the trauma suffered by a Belfast father and son who were wrongly imprisoned in the 1970s, in In The Name Of The Father, which Jim Sheridan directed. Their second collaboration, Some Mother's Son - which has already proved almost as controversial as their first - shifts the emphasis on to two mothers who have sons on the H Block hunger strikes in 1981, and this time Terry George is directing (see interview, below).

Some Mother's Son opens on television coverage of Margaret Thatcher's election victory speech in 1979, which quoted St Francis of Assisi and began: "where there is discord may we bring harmony". It ends with a list of the names of the 10 men who died two years later on the H Block hunger strike, their ages and the dates of their deaths.

Those resonant slices of cinema verite bookend an emotional drama which employs the classical political cinema device of addressing turbulent political events by observing them from the points of view of ordinary people whose lives are changed irrevocably by those events. Whereas In The Name Of The Father - which came under attack for the dramatic licence it took with the facts of the case - dealt with real life people in Giuseppe and Gerry Conlon, the new film features fictitious characters as its central pair of mother and son protagonists.

One of those women, Annie Higgins (Fionnuala Flanagan) comes from a rural, hard line Republican background, and her son, Frank (David O'Hara) is a fugitive IRA man who has her encouragement. However, the focus of the film is on the other woman, Kathleen Quigley (Helen Mirren), a widowed, middle class teacher who has no idea that her son, Gerard (Aiden Gillen), a university student, leads a secret life as an IRA activist.

She is resolutely anti violence, and she spurns an offer of support from a Sinn Fein kingpin when her son is jailed for 12 years in the Maze prison for killing a British soldier. Gerard is put in the same cell as Bobby Sands (played by John Lynch), who already is long haired and bearded and taking part in an on the blanket protest.

When Sands goes on hunger strike in March 1981, he is soon joined by both Gerard Quigley and Frank Higgins, while their mothers, two women with diametrically opposed points of view, are drawn together reluctantly as they face the very real prospect of their sons dying on the protest. The ultimate dilemma for the women comes when they are advised that a parent has the legal rights to take his or her son off the hunger strike if he goes into a coma.

Some Mother's Son is at its most effective in the skill and precision with which it recreates the key events of those months the blanket protest which led to the dirty protest and on to the hunger strike itself; the election of Sands as MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone on the 40th day on his hunger strike; his death 26 days later; and his funeral.

The linking fictional narrative is less compelling, and it is most problematic in the rather contrived relationship it forges between the two mothers. Despite the best efforts of Fionnuala Flanagan, her character, Annie Higgins, is largely set adrift by a narrative which perfunctorily assumes rather than credibly develops her relationship with her son.

The warm and close personal bond between Kathleen and Gerard Quigley is much more persuasively established and sustained, and it gains in credibility from the strong portrayals etched by Helen Mirren in one of her most subtle but arresting performances and the very promising young Irish actor, Aidan Gillen. Most of the other characters in the drama are merely ciphers, although Gerard McSorley is outstanding as the priest who makes a passionate call to the IRA to call off the hunger strike.

Just as no narrative feature film and no documentary is ever truly objective, nor is Some Mother's Son. However, singling out the caricaturing of the British government officials as hard nosed, toffee nosed public schoolboys is hardly the point, given that what the film shows is dogged obstinacy expressed in different ways by both sides of the impasse.

In fact, it is the film's various depictions of cast iron intransigence on all sides that leaves a sour taste of hopelessness at the end of the day, for all the many steps forwards and backwards in the Northern Ireland situation in the 15 years since the media was dominated by the dying days of the men who are remembered in the closing credits of Some Mother's Song.

"A Time To Kill" (15s) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCI

The old Hollywood gag about the Polish starlet who was so dim she slept with the writer seems outdated these days, what with the likes of Michael Crichton and Joe Eszterhas receiving astronomical sums of money for turkeys like Congo and Showgirls Novelist John Grisham has also added a couple of zeroes to his already handsome bank balance, with three of his best selling legal thrillers having received expensive big screen adaptations. A Time To Kill was Grisham's first novel and apparently the one closest to his heart, and in this case he has retained script, cast and director approval as part of his contract with Warner Brothers. The result is a solid, well made film which appreciably benefits from the novelist's input.

Unlike The Firm, The Pelican Brief and The Client, A Time To Kill is not structured gas a star vehicle, and the casting of virtual unknown Matthew McConaughey in the central role is a refreshing change. McConaughey plays an eager young white lawyer from a small Mississippi town who agrees to defend black factory worker Samuel Jackson, whose 10 year old daughter was raped and almost killed by two racist rednecks. Afraid that they would not get the sentences they deserved, he killed both men on their way to the courtroom, and is himself charged with murder.

McConaughey finds himself not just up against wily prosecutor Kevin Spacey, but also against the deep seated racism which still exists in the town. The threats and violence against him and his family put strain on his relationship with his wife (Ashley Judd), and threaten his future career. But, with the assistance of his ne'er do well divorce lawyer friend (Oliver Platt), his legal mentor (Donald Sutherland) and a bright young student (Sandra Bullock), he continues to fight the case.

This is all fairly standard stuff, but handled with polish and style by director Joel Schumacher, who evinces a much stronger sense of the American South than was seen in previous adaptations of Grisham's work (one of which, The Client, he also directed). It seems strange to see Bullock taking what is essentially a supporting role at this stage of her career, but she's obviously there to counterbalance McConaughey's lack of star power. It's actually a huge relief to see such a central part being taken by an unfamiliar face, and not to know exactly what the character will do next.

McConaughey himself has looks and charisma to burn, and seems set for a promising career. A strong supporting cast, including Kiefer Sutherland, Patrick McGoohan and Brenda Fricker, does everything required of it, and Peter Menzie's camerawork conveys the sweltering heat of a Southern summer. If the courtroom scenes themselves are not as dramatic as they might have been, and if there's a touch of glibness about the whole affair, it's offset by the handsomeness and quality of the overall production.