The Nest

Jude Law excels in this taut 1980s-set drama about a trader lured back to the City with the promise of a big score, but whose life rapidly unravels.

Rory O’Hara (Law) has spent much of the last decade in the US. But opportunities seem thin on the ground. So, when he sees a chance to get back in with his old London firm and the possibility of negotiating a career-defining deal, he informs his wife Allison (Carrie Coon) and their children (Oona Roche and Charlie Shotwell) that their lives are about to change. Moving into an expansive country pile, the transition for Allison and the kids proves challenging. Rory initially thrives, but his profligate spending and the costs of maintaining a lavish lifestyle soon take their toll. And the deal that Rory conjured up may not necessarily be the one-in-a-lifetime chance he originally envisaged.

Sean Durkin is a master of understated yet sustained tension. And just as he conjured up atmospheric worlds for his earlier Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) and the terrific TV series Southcliffe (2013), here he presents a singular portrait of London’s financial world and the upstarts who dominated it during the 1980s. And Rory is a role that Law was born to play. The nervous energy the actor exudes allows him to run the gamut between the crazed but brilliant trader and a man wildly out of control. He’s matched by Coon’s increasingly fazed Allison, who gradually sees through the artifice Rory builds to shield his past from the world.