THE GENERAL (Sony Pictures Classics) Directed by John Boorman
If Martin Scorsese had hailed from Ireland instead of New York, he might have made a picture like "The General," a dazzling, frequently hilarious crime story about Martin Cahill, a legendary figure in the Irish underworld. Cahill, marvelously played by Brendan Gleeson, saw himself as a modern-day Robin Hood who spirited away the valuables of the wealthy and shared part of his take with his less-fortunate neighbors. "My way of paying taxes, y'know?" he explains to one of his cronies. But his busy schedule of thieving didn't get in the way of his family life. He fathered children by both his wife Frances (Maria Doyle Kennedy) and her sister Tina (Angeline Ball), an arrangement neither woman had a problem with, according to the film. There are echoes of HBO's superb series about gangsters in the suburbs, "The Sopranos," in the way Martin manages to come home from his unsavory career and still have the energy to throw a backyard birthday party or shop for racing pigeons, another of his passions. Buying larger ticket items is a bit more complex, however. When he decides to purchase a new house, Frances has to remind him that realtors aren't likely to accept 80,000 pounds in cash. Cahill's nemesis is police inspector Ned Kenny (Jon Voight), with whom he maintains a prickly relationship that has undercurrents of grudging mutual admiration. Voight, whose recent performances have ranged from the flat-out bizarre ("Anaconda," "U-Turn") to underplayed ("Rosewood"), finds the perfect key for Kenny, a beleaguered cop who calls Cahill a "scooombug," yet seems on some level to enjoy the mind games the men throw out at each other. "The General" was directed by John Boorman, whose films such as "Deliverance" and "The Emerald Forest" are red-blooded examples of macho cinema at its most virile. But though this is one of Boorman's lighter works, it still has plenty of violence, colorful language and raging testosterone. At one point, Cahill, suspecting an associate of treachery, nails the man's hand to a snooker table, hoping to get a confession. When the terrified guy still pleads his innocence, Cahill relents, apologizes and even drives him to the emergency room. Not enough can be said about Gleeson's amazing characterization of Cahill; did the Academy Award voters who handed the Best Actor Oscar to Roberto Benigni's soppy Jerry Lewis impersonation bother to take a look at this work? It's tremendous, full of witty little touches, such as the way Cahill is constantly wandering through the streets with his face hidden behind his hands, like a movie star caught by the paparazzi in an indiscretion. Much of what Cahill does is morally reprehensible and even shocking, and Boorman and Gleeson don't attempt to make him admirable. By the same token, it's obvious they were fascinated with him and in this vivid black comedy they manage to rope us into sharing their obsession.
James Sanford
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews