WE haven’t had a cuddly IRA movie in a long time.
There was a time when such misfires were sprayed all over cinema screens (Blown Away, The Devil’s Own, and A Prayer for the Dying) but thankfully we have moved on in more ways than one, and such thundering wrecks are a thing of the past.
Well, at least, I thought they were.
In the Land of Saints and Sinners, streaming now on Netflix, has got it terribly wrong. Like so many films focused around the Troubles, it lacks realism, historical accuracy, and is unashamedly romanticised with a dewy-eyed plot and one-dimensional characters.
Directed by Robert Lorenz, this action thriller is as clichéd as the bevvy of single unvetted Irish males holding court in the film’s pub scenes. Complete with big Calvita cheese-eating grins and nodding in unison to diddly-eye while supping pints of plain, they look like they were sedated and tweed caps placed on their heads after walking on set.
You would swear the whole rural ‘céad míle fáilte’ schtick was filmed by Tourism Ireland to get American bottoms onto Aer Lingus seats and jetting across the pond to the auld Emerald Isle to spend their bucks.
Liam Neeson plays the role of Finbar Murphy, a huggable, good-hearted hitman that decides it is time to put away his Armalite rifle and instead plant a flower garden. His days of putting limey soldiers in the ground are behind him and the only thing he wants to bury now are tulip bulbs.
There’s a great supporting cast including Kerry Condon, Ciarán Hinds, Jack Gleeson, Colm Meaney, and Niamh Cusack, but it is the dramatic Donegal landscape with mountainous backdrops carved out by weighty Atlantic swells and wild gales that really steals the show.
Lorenz goes for a cowboy movie feel set in the foothills of the Derryveagh Mountains, but for all its Shane and High Noon aspirations, In the Land of Saints and Sinners is comes across about as thrilling as an episode of Ballykissangel.
(2/5)
