Posted on 03/19/2018 3:00:55 PM PDT by Rummyfan
For our Saturday film feature this week, I thought we'd mark both St Patrick's Day and the instant disappearance, at least in my part of the world, of Liam Neeson's latest thriller (The Commuter - or Non-Stop, his plane film, on a train). At any rate, before he hit the big time killing large numbers of Albanians in the Taken franchise, Liam Neeson hit the medium time killing small numbers of Englishmen and Irishmen in the 1996 biopic Michael Collins. Collins was the original IRA's director of intelligence and one of the Irish negotiators at the Treaty talks in London in 1921.... Putting his name to the agreement on Dominion status for a new Irish Free State, Collins remarked, "I have signed my own death warrant." Eight months later he was killed in the Irish Civil War.
If the preceding three sentences are way more shamrock-hued history than you're in the mood for when there's another seventeen choruses of "Macnamara's Band" to be sung, well, you've come to the right picture: Michael Collins is the thinking man's Die Hard – Dail Hard maybe, given the protagonists' habit of convening every so often in their make-believe republican parliament. ... the film has as many explosions and killings and thrilling escapes as any caper this side of Neeson's Albanian corpsefests. It is not especially anti-English: indeed, the English may rather enjoy it, since, unlike most republican propagandists, the director Neil Jordan doesn't attempt to justify the violence by boring on about ancient injustices, real or imagined, or by dredging up Yeats' "terrible beauty" and the usual highfalutin guff. It comes out shooting, goes out shooting, and in between is a blarney-free zone; its answer to the Irish Question is "Hasta la vista, muthaf**ker!"
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
As a fan of the historical Michael Collins, I was somewhat underwhelmed by this particularly cinematic interpretation. The film is only mildly engaging.
I couldn't find it, and so I was all for watching "the Quiet Man", but the family preferred to watch "Boondock Saints".
I enjoyed the film.
Celts have always preferred fighting each other to fighting a outside power. True in Julius Caesar’s time, true in Dark Age Ireland and true in modern times.
Arguably set up by Eamon De Valera.
When I took a course on terrorism, the course taught that he was the father of modern terrorism. Michael Collins’ methods of warfare were copied by the Algerians, then the PLO etc. The instructor claimed there were IRA members who trained the Algerians, and aided the PLO (in this case probably the Marxist Provisional faction of the IRA).
As a member of the same family as Michael I sat with four family members and watched to the end of the credits. We all cried and cheered as we walked out. The twinkle in my father’s eye lasted all the way home. Thank you for a great memory.
Too bad they didn’t cast Kenneth Branagh as Collins. He was a dead ringer for him.
“When you want to barbeque an Irishman, you can always get another Irishman to turn the spit.”
For those who have not read it, I highly recommend the biography by Tim Pat Coogan The Man Who Made Ireland: The Life and Death of Michael Collins.
Also, Collins’ writings about politics and economics are available on Amazon. They make for an interesting read as well.
If you ever want a more contemporary Irish film watch “Sing Street”———very good,takes place in the 50s.
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Ooops,the 80s.
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One more comment about the development of modern terrorism.
Collins only made war on British government institutions, not on women and children. It took the Algerians and the PLO to add that wrinkle to the method.
“As a fan of the historical Michael Collins, I was somewhat underwhelmed by this particularly cinematic interpretation. The film is only mildly engaging.”
Did you ever see The Wind That shakes The Barley?
I shall look for it. Thanks.
I corrected the year-——1980s,not 1950s——Enjoy.
Yes. Not bad.
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