CRIME TIME CINEMA
Canadian director Kari Skogland may have been drawn to the story of IRA informer Martin McGartland because he survived an assassination attempt in Canada's Maritimes, but as a Canadian she's able to bring a sort of disinterest to the tale which both helps and hinders it.
It helps because it presents the scenes of life in Belfast under British army occupation as what it was, more a civil war than 'troubles', and because it's able to take a straightforward look at the British involvement with the violence in a subtle way. There's the revelation that a high-ranking IRA torturer/enforcer is actually a British informer/agent provocateur, which reminded me of the scenes of Peter Boyle in Eddie Coyle in terms of cold betrayal.
Of course betrayal in Ireland is not a new topic, nor did it begin with the Troubles. John Ford's Informer is, in some ways a model for this film, in the sense that it presents a character whose motivations are not selfish greed, but personal and caring, and whose betrayal is ruthlessly avenged. Nor does it end there. The police surveillance which seems so oppressive in Belfast is now commonplace in every city in the UK, an irony which isn't lost on the neutral observer.
But Skogland's balanced approach does make it somewhat difficult to mix the thriller she clearly wants this film to be, or cannot avoid having it be, with the almost documentary nature of her portrayal of Belfast life in the 1980s. Yet it's the latter strand that is where the film really shines. Martin becomes an informer partly because he's desperate for any sort of work. 'I'm offering you a job you can feel good about,' says Fergus as he recruits him to be an informer. He wants to equip his wife and baby with the accoutrements of the Belfast good life, and oddly no one really questions where it comes from, assuming the IRA is funding it. But Martin's resulting house with its modcons gets an eerie echo when we finally see the inside of Special Branch officer Fergus's place. It looks like your maiden aunt's retirement bungalow in Eastbourne, and says as much about the character as Ben Kingsley's deliberately low-key performance. Kingley's sensitivity seems somehow misplaced. Yes, he too is betrayed by MI5 and his superiors, and yes he lets Jim Sturgess steal the show as McGartland, but his slow boil seems to be reprising his tough guy roles, say Sexy Beast, and then pasting on compassion. Watching him coil his frame to release that compassion seems somehow arch, and at the same time fey; what is his interest in Sturgess, beyond information? Paternal? Fraternal? The same concern the British show for their Irish cousins?
Yet to focus on the spotlight performances is to miss the real beauty of the film, which is its juxtaposition of the shallowness of Belfast life under the shadow of death. Part of this is the superlative production design (Eve Stewart, and costuming by Stephanie Collie) played against the way cinematographer Jonathan Freeman gets that grainy look of the era's newsfilm coverage and its cop thrillers. And part it is the situation. Martin and Lara (Natalie Press) consummate their first date on the roof of the hotel where they've dined; meanwhile his first assignment for the IRA's Mickey (Tom Collins) has wreaked carnage in a pub. It's Martin's desire for a 'normal' life in a world where there is little honest work, and where walking down the street means random stops from capricious British soldiers, that leaves him vulnerable to Fergus' importuning. That and his real horror at the violence he's become a part of. The IRA never seduced him, not even with red-headed Grace (Rose McGowan). Martin can turn her down, and survive, but then when he betrays her (as a result of being set-up unknowingly by MI5) his Irish fate is sealed.
This juxtaposition of ignorant innocence and extreme violence, of daily life and civil war, of political platitudes and hypocritical callousness is presented as the symptom of the times, not as its cause, and perhaps that will bother British reviewers, with more of an emotional stake in their own last gasps of imperial pax brittania. But perhaps as a Canadian, Skogland is better positioned to see the situation with the kind of balance that lets her concentrate of the effects of the war on ordinary lives. Showing the revenge shooting at the top, and telling the story in flashback, lets her concentrate on the details, not the result, and the film works because of it. But I did wonder why the shooters, out in the middle of nowhere on the Canadian coastline, felt it necessary to wear balaclavas?
Michael Carlson
FIFTY DEAD MEN WALKING
directed by Kari Skogland
screenplay by Skogland, based on the book by Martin McGartland and Nicholas Davis
