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The GeneralRating:
Release Date: 20 July, 1999 Retail Price: $27.95 OUR Price: $24.99 You SAVE: $2.96! Cast: Complete Cast (10 total) |
The General Reviews
Another misfire from Boorman
John Boorman's 1998 The General was hailed as a major comeback, though it's hard to see why on the evidence of the film itself. One of three films made that year about famed Northern Irish criminal Martin Cahill (alongside Ordinary Decent Criminal and Vicious Circles), it has an abundance of incident and style (the film was shot in color but released in b&w Scope in some territories) but makes absolutely no impact and just goes on forever. With a main character who threatens witnesses, car bombs doctors, causes a hundred people to lose their jobs, tries to buy off the sexually abused daughter of one of his gang to keep out of jail and nails one of his own to a snooker table yet still remains a popular local legend an attractive enough personality for his wife to not only approve but actually suggest a ménage a trios with her sister, it needs a charismatic central performance to sell the character and the film. It doesn't get it. Instead, it's lumbered with what may well be Brendan Gleeson's worst and most disinterested performance: he delivers his lines and stands in the right place but there's nothing to suggest either a local hero or the inner workings of a complex character. On the plus side, this helps not to overglamorize a character who is nothing more than an egotistical thug, but it's at odds with a script that seems to be expecting us to love him and his antics.
There's a minor section that picks up interest when the IRA whips up a local hate campaign against the `General' and his men, painting them as `anti-social' drug dealers purely because Cahill won't share his loot from a robbery with them, but its temporary resolution is so vaguely shot - something to do with Cahill donning a balaclava and joining the protestors which we're expected to find loveably cheeky - that it's just thrown away. Things are more successful in the last third as the pressure mounts and his army falls apart, but by then it's too late to really care. Adrian Dunbar, Maria Doyle Kennedy and the gorgeous Angeline Ball do good work in adoring supporting roles, but Jon Voight's hammy Garda beat cop seems to be there more for American sales than moral balance, overcompensating for Gleeson's comatose non-involvement in what feels like a total misfire. Come back Zardoz, all is forgiven.
"It's Us Against Them."
After seeing The General a second time, I have to say that Brendan Gleeson is one of the finest actors of our day. He impresses time and again be it in Troy, Gangs of New York, or in another Irish classic, The Snapper. What's really surprising here is that Jon Voight is nearly as good as Gleeson. His Irish accent is outstanding. The General has the same film noir feel of an early Guy Ritchie effort, but it is infinitely more complex due to its characterization. Perhaps the tale is historically inaccurate, yet this has to be one of the more seamlessly entertaining plots I've encountered. All of the criminal capers are quite novel, and there's nothing rehashed about its specifics. Cahill's strategies are rather amazing from his way he cements his alibis to his handling of his crew. The political facets are an added pleasure such as the way in which the IRA hangs like a poisonous cloud over all criminal activities in the Dublin underworld. One gradually begins to comprehend that they, just like the protestant paramilitaries, are not much different from their targets. What really makes this a five star affair is the uniqueness of Cahill which makes his life one that you'll not soon forget.
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