THE GENERAL |
| CREDITS: Director: John Boorman. Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Adrian Dunbar, Maria Doyle
Kennedy, Angeline Ball, Sean McGinley & Jon Voight. Ireland 1998 (15). INTRODUCTION: Boorman is back with a film that won him the best director gong at Cannes '98, based on the true story of Dublin favourite son, brutal criminal Martin Cahill. SYNOPSIS: Neither republican nor loyalist, Dublin folk hero Martin Cahill (Gleeson) manages to piss off both not to mention the RUC in his meteoric rise to the status of Ireland's most wanted criminal. REVIEW: With the sort of violence one associates with a QT flick, the ethos of loyalty and family one associates with a Mafia flick and a heist or two that actually go right for a change, this film mixes genres and still manages to remain faithful to its factual roots. Gleeson is as ever superb, in what must have been a daunting role, as there seem to be few people in Dublin who don't have a tale to tell about their own personal encounters with this reclusive figure. Dunbar is superb as Noel Curley, Cahill right-hand man, Kennedy and Ball are charming as Cahill's wife and sister-in-law/mistress respectively and McGinley has never been sleazier as one of the less pleasant members of Cahill's gang of violent and murderous rogues. Long-term Boorman collaborator Jon Voight puts in admirable support as Ned Kennedy, the policeman sent out to bring Cahill down, and effects an Irish brogue that is more than convincing enough to fool a home-counties boy like myself. The relationship between cop and robber is one of the film's true revelations as Kennedy is brought down to Cahill's level in his pursuit. Kennedy is one of the few not to cheer following Cahill's assassination, not because he liked him, but because he alone understands the implications. Cahill's death, murdered by the IRA for dealing with the loyalists, highlights what was perhaps his biggest flaw, an arrogant refusal to take the political situation in his country seriously. Boorman is back on form mixing the brutal violence of "Point Blank" with the emotion of "Hope and Glory" and the Jon Voight of "Deliverance". What more could you want? Mutt's Rating: **** |