THE DEVIL'S OWN
A film review by Michael Redman
Copyright 1997 Michael Redman
***1/2 (out of ****)
The situation in Ireland often reminds me of the old Buffalo Springfield song "For What It's Worth": "There's something happening here, What it is ain't exactly clear, There's a man with a gun over there, Telling me I got to beware...There's battle lines being drawn, Nobody's right if everybody's wrong."
Whether you favor the wearing of the green or the orange, it's difficult to uphold your side's atrocities as morally justified or as anything other than politically justified.
As IRA hero (or terrorist depending upon your political leanings) Frankie McGuire says "If you're not confused, you don't understand."
McGuire (Brad Pitt) may recognize that the situation is foggy, but out of the necessity of being a soldier at war, he must be single-mindedly dedicated to his job. Friends may fall by the wayside, he may endanger innocents, but for the warrior, the goals always justify the means.
Across the ocean, New York Irish cop Tom O'Meara (Harrison Ford) is a bird of a completely different color. For him, the law is the prize his eye is on. He plays only by the rules and refuses to lie or cheat in order to punish the wrong-doers. Of course men not being perfect and this being a movie, O'Meara faces his personal dark night of the soul where he must decide which is more important: truth or loyalty.
Make no mistake. There is no doubting who the film says has the better life. O'Meara's reward is a lovely family in a safe friendly neighborhood; McGuire's is friends with bullet holes in their foreheads.
When McGuire (traveling as Rory Devaney) is placed in the O'Meara home by a friend of the family who is a secret IRA fundraiser, the two form an instant attachment. The cop has three daughters and is grateful that there is someone else in the house who "pees standing up". The fugitive's fisherman father was killed in front of him for being a suspected Republican sympathizer by a hooded gunman when Devaney...err...McGuire was a young child. The son and da each never had, it's a match made in a star-crossed heaven.
Pitt's character is posing as an Irish immigrant working on a construction site, but in reality he's working on a boat that he'll take across the Atlantic loaded with stinger missiles to even the fight in Northern Ireland.
The two actors reportedly didn't get along on the set, but that doesn't show up on the screen. Ford, one of the finest actors of our time, and Pitt, who can no longer be dismissed as just another pretty boy, have a dynamic chemistry together. When they're together in a scene, you can feel the forceful tension.
The minor downfall of the film is in its lengthy but essential characterizations of the secondary characters. Far too much time is spent in demonstrating O'Meara's idyllic family life in Brooklyn. We get the concept about a half hour before director thinks we do.
Once this is out of the way, the movie takes off. There are very few black and white ways of looking at the Irish situation and there is an equal scarcity of good guys and bad guys (except for a particularly sadistic arms dealer and, of course the British government) in the film. On opposite sides of the fence, O'Meara and McGuire are both heroic figures willing to make personal sacrifices for their cause. There's no way to root for only one and they can't both triumph.
As Frankie McGuire explains "Don't look for a happy ending. It's not an American story. It's an Irish one."
[This appeared in the 4/3/97 issue of the "Bloomington Voice", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be reached at mredman@bvoice.com ]
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