The General: Movies on posthoc.com

soul of a celtic godfather

by Thomas Burchfield

"The General", the latest unique film from writer-director John Boorman, is a beautifully shot, complex and honest look at one of the most successful professional criminals in modern times, Irish mobster Martin Cahill.

Cahill was an outlaw's outlaw who, in his twenty-year criminal career, ripped off an estimated 60 million dollars worth of cash, gold and stolen goods. Even Boorman found himself a victim when Cahill broke into his house and made off with the director's gold record he was given for the million selling "Dueling Banjos" theme from his classic film "Deliverance."

Chalk one up for Providence. Being one of Cahill's victims proved an inspiration for Boorman who, five years after Cahill's mysterious death, has brought us a gorgeous black and white epic detailing the highs and lows of Cahill's extraordinary life: his masterful heists, his menage a trois home life with both his wife and her sister (he fathered kids by both of them), his in-your-face defiance of every single one of Irish Society's institutions from the Church, through the Police and on to both the IRA and Protestant Loyalists. Almost every one of them is a suspect in Cahill's unsolved 1994 murder.

Thankfully, Boorman's heartfelt fascination with his subject doesn't seem to blind him to Cahill's evil: he was, after all, a full-fledged criminal who ran his mob with a cruel, iron fist. We see Cahill (Brendan Gleeson) torture a suspect underling by nailing his hands to a billiard table and shooting one of his most trusted associates Gary (Sean McGinley), in order to delay Gary's trial for raping his niece. Cahill has no qualms about threatening witnesses. And he's absolutely no Robin Hood: though fair to his gang, there's no indication he ever shares a dime with the populace he often claimed to represent and eventually betrays in his own way.

But bad guys do have their human side. When the Government decides to tear down the Hollyfield projects in Dublin where he grew up, Cahill bravely refuses to leave, even if it means pitching a tent under the tumbling walls; after he realizes the suspect underling he's tortured is innocent, he becomes racked with profound guilt. Though a brazenly public figure, he has the odd tic of hiding his face with his hand or shrouding it in a windbreaker, even though, amusingly, it makes him all the more identifiable. He excites fierce tribal loyalty in his compatriots and the two sisters whom he loves and lives with (a relationship that is portrayed with filial warmth). Even his arch- nemesis Inspector Ned Kenny (Jon Voight) finds himself taken with this coarse bandit, as he breaks down in tears after beating him.

And without a doubt this Most Artful of Dodgers loves stealing as much as Michael Jordan loves basketball. The heist sequences, brilliantly shot and edited, are like watching children at play, especially when Cahill & Co. rip off millions of dollars of valuable paintings and throw them around the Irish moors like ten cent postcards. Once it again it's the movies that are best at showing the high side of the outlaw's life. Despite the cautionary tone, this is still a rebel's movie. Cahill is too much a force of nature to be approached in any conventional moral fashion.

But the criminal's life is still a mostly bleak one, with few high points along a road that ends in either a long slow death in prison or a painful bloody one in the street. Boorman's choice to shoot in black and white is an attempt to strip the romantic sheen off this world. However, for someone with Boorman's poetic eye, the urge to romanticize can never be painted over with greys. The imagery is admittedly at times too ravishing to make the anti-crime message it's trying to convey sticks with the viewer. In addition, the various crowd scenes and public confrontations are perfunctorily staged and lack much in the way of impact.

All the actors are terrific. Brendan Gleeson as Cahill finds every facet of this amazing individual, connects them all together and makes himself a major star in the process. It's a rich and remarkably centered portrait of a dangerous and complex man and a big step on what should be a distinguished career.

He's supported by a remarkable cast, especially Jon Voight as Inspector Denny, a stolid and determined bulldog flatfoot, painfully aware of both his limits and his own moral turpitude as he finds himself sinking to Cahill's brutish level the more frustrated he becomes at his failure to nail him for good.

John Boorman has had a remarkable string of hits and misses in his long and checkered career. "The General" will stand one of his treasures.

[Thomas Burchfield can be reached at TBDeluxe@aol.com and appears regularly in Swing Time magazine.]

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