50 Dead Men Walking

I was one of the few who saw this at the cinema when it came out. I went alone to a cinema in Bradford to see it, and I noticed that the few other people in with me were all loners as well. It got decent reviews in the media, but most people in Britain are just not interested in Northern Ireland. It's funny how people are much more interested in learning about Afghanistan and the Taliban than they are about Northern Ireland and the IRA.

I don't think a film has ever been made showing the Troubles from a Unionist perspective. This film is not really Unionist but it is anti-IRA, and such a film had to be made. To be honest, my Northern Irish sympathies lie with the nationalist SDLP but, after The Wind that Shakes the Barley and Hunger, it was time for an anti-IRA film to balance things out a bit.

The start of the film is incredibly intense with a ambush on the McGartland at his car, years after he had left Ireland. This is returned to at the end of the film. It shows how powerful the IRA were that they could track him down thousands of miles away and years after he had stopped acting as a double-agent. I am surprised the film got a 15 and not an 18. It may not be violent all the way through, but there are torture scenes in it and I'd consider any torture to warrant an 18.

McGartland is not an angel but he's the sort of man who simply cannot bring himself to kill anyone, even if he might be willing to commit the odd petty crime. McGartland seems to have vague IRA sympathies at the start of the film, but he becomes more willing to report on their activities to the British secret services as he witnesses torture, bombing of pubs and lorries, and deals with shady Libyans. The ending states that McGartland saved 50 lives (as implied by the title) although he doesn't save anything like as many in the events we see in the film. I expect that the book (of the same name) gives details on this that the film omitted.

There is some very dark humour. The darkest is when a man in a balaclava says "Thank God for the IRA!" just before he knee-caps a petty thief.

There are attempts to show the crime of the British army as well. This is done well in the first half of the film in showing heavy-handed raids on homes and interrogation of people who are just walking around Belfast. It becomes a bit messy towards the end when MI5 get involved and want to sacrifice McGartland. Fergus, who recruited McGartland initially, seems to become a one-man-band at the time when McGartland is kidnapped, but Fergus must be still in his job later on when he arranges for McGartland to be re-located to Scotland. I've seen the film twice and I can't follow his thread properly. At the end of the film, the text box includes a note that the British government collaborated with Loyalist paramilitaries at times in the Troubles. This was obviously inserted just to avoid the perception of pro-British propaganda.

I'll give this 8/10. It was an entertaining story and a welcome addition to films about the Troubles. Can you believe that this film won awards yet lost a lot of money at the box office? It might've been more successful had it not been for the condemnation of the real Marty McGartland of the film and had it not been for Rose McGowan's stupid comments at the film's launch that she would've supported the IRA back then (thus alienating part of the film's audience), but Northern Ireland is never going to be cool.