Ray McAnally

In The Mission (1986), Ray McAnally’s Cardinal Altamirano has enough individual presence to make us attend to the man doing the deciding. That matters in a drama whose people struggle to compete with the landscape. We wanted more time with him, because he made the exercise of authority feel like something a person had to think through. His performance is one reason to persevere with Roland Joffé’s film, though it cannot put right the script.

The international attention came in the mid-1980s, after extensive work in British and Irish television from the 1960s. An earlier supporting part in Billy Budd (1962) belongs to a much longer working life than the late run of prominent roles might suggest. The Mission was the breakthrough, followed by Rick Pym, a con-man father, in A Perfect Spy (1987), and Harry Perkins in A Very British Coup (1988). He also played Christy Brown’s father in My Left Foot (1989). Television and complex supporting parts suited an actor whose low-key manner kept attention on the character.

The difficulty with The Mission is that Robert Bolt’s script needs more than discreet assistance from its actors. McAnally supplies individuality and Jeremy Irons supplies some of the feeling the writing misses, but too much of the drama remains underdeveloped. Stuart Craig’s production design gives them a credible historical setting without distracting from their work. Yet the landscape is what stays with us most clearly, which is a problem for a film that needs its people and their dealings to hold our interest.

McAnally could move from gangsters to authority figures and make English accents convincing, but versatility alone is a poor reason to spend an evening with an actor. We value the way his quiet acting keeps our attention on the character, particularly when the writing offers less help than it should. Start with The Mission, with fair warning that we rate his contribution more highly than the drama around it.