Fifty Dead Men Walking Film Review: Cinephilia

To the credit of writer-director Kari Skogland, she has opted to keep the broad Irish brogue of her film's characters. Whilst this contributes to the sense of authenticity, for anyone not familiar with it it tends to make the film with its relatively complicated plot involving subterfuge and double-crossing quite difficult to follow and thus diminishes engagement. Notwithstanding it is a gripping story not least because it is based on fact. Inspired by an autobiographical book by Martin McGartland and Nicholas Davies it opens with McGartland (Jim Sturgess) in the icy backwoods of Canada being shot multiple times at point-blank range by a balaclava’d assassin. It then scrolls back to Belfast in 1988.at the height of The Troubles with McGartland a petty criminal recruited by Special Branch officer Fergus (Ben Kingsley) to work as a mole in the IRA. Getting to this point the hardest part of the plot to follow and one tends to pick up the broad diegesis whilst letting go of the specifics but after that the lines are clearly drawn even if some of the dialogue gets lost.

McGartland’s story is one of those ones that seems almost too incredible to be true, including aside from the opening assassination attempt, a leap from a multi-story apartment building onto a concrete pavement (the film uses the “inspired by” tag to absolve itself of historical truth and apparently McGartland does not endorse the film ). Historical accuracy aside, Skogland certainly brings home the brutality of the IRA, the cynicism of the British and, in general, the insanity of the times. Sturgess gives a convincing performance as the seemingly foolhardy McGartland and Kingsley yet again demonstrates his versatility (although it is hard to accept him in a wig). Skogland amply demonstrates that like Kathryn Bigelow, women can not only do action but do them intelligently, perhaps the relatively prominent roles of Natalie Press and Rose McGowan being indicative of a certain gender difference.

DVD Extras: Descriptive sub-titles for the hearing-impaired; Descriptive narration for the hearing-impaired

DVD available from: Village Roadshow

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