Mind Games

Lynda La Plante's credentials in crime stories featuring strong female characters would be hard to improve on. Following her seminal "Prime Suspect", "Mind Games" is an intelligent and multi-faceted perspective on the role of the mind and the brain in investigation and in life. The central character (played by Fiona Shaw, without question one of the greatest actresses in the world) uses not just her professional psychological profiling qualifications to inform her work, but also draws on her own faith (the character was previously a Roman Catholic nun) to help her in understanding what the mind can do and what it cannot overcome. It is a magnificent film: exciting, original and quiet, with a uniformly excellent cast who bring a real freshness to the genre.