Imdb Ranking 6.3
A movie about Martin Cahill, the Dublin criminal portrayed so well by Brendad Gleeson in The General. But I guess both movies were coming out at the same time so this movie called Martin Cahill Michael Lynch (Keven Spacey), and decided to present itself as a fictional movie that was not based on a real character.
But, we have a Dublin criminal with two wives who are sisters, has three children, wears a mask over his face in public, gives the policemen following him the slip with clever tricks, takes off his clothes in public and collects his dole in his mask, and fights being evicted from his apartment. In the first five minutes you can tell the movie is about the life of Martin Cahill.
Alec (Colin Farell) is one of his men, and together they rob the dole office, while the police follow the wrong man on a motorcycle. Michael then reads his kids to sleep and then goes over to his wife's sister house. The police then comes and pick him up.
Michael then plans to rob O'Donnell's jewelery factory (movie is almost exact same plot as The General to this point. It seems to be based on the same screenplay. Change the name from O'Connells to O'Donnels and call it fiction?).
Following The General's plot, Michael tortures one of his men when he thinks he turned on him. Michael wins his court case and the IRA comes and talks to Michael. Then we have the stealing of the Dutch master from the museum.
The police then begin an around the clock surveillance of Michael. Michael then gets an off from the IRA for one of the paintings he robbed and Michael's men want him to take it. When Michael goes up to pick up his dole he finds out that they have been cut off.
Michael refuses to sell to the IRA and some of his men start to start to turn on him. When they go off on a bank job with the IRA, Michael intrudes on the job, they are killed. Michael is also gunned down but when the sisters go to identify him, we can tell that even though his face has been destroyed by the gunfire, it was not Michael's body.
A decent movie, that was ruined by a bad ending. If they were going to be so faithful to the Martin Cahill story, why would they they ruin it by yacking on a phony ending?
No where near as good as The General. It seems that the movie was forced to make itself different from The General which was released earlier in the year, so it followed the plot and then added on a fantasy ending which just didn't work.
