| John Boorman won
the Best Director award at Cannes last
spring for this beautiful portrait of
real-life Irish mobster Martin Cahill
(Brendan Gleeson, Braveheart). It
begins like any other screen biography,
with the notorious gangster meeting his
maker on the eve of the 1994 I.R.A.
cease-fire, and then flashes back to a
young Cahill (brilliantly played by
Eamonn Owens, The Butcher Boy)
slowly becoming more and more involved in
a life of crime. According to the legend,
the musically minded boy confused the
word "bugler" with
"burglar" - and as they say,
the rest is history. Continuously
hunted – and grudgingly respected
– by his arch-nemesis, police
inspector Ned Kenney (Jon Voight), Cahill
rarely showed his face in public and is
often portrayed, quite hysterically, with
his face hidden by his hands, a book or
completely shrouded by a hooded
sweatshirt. He also had a very strange
home life, sharing a home and children
with both his wife (Maria Doyle Kennedy)
and her sister (Angeline Ball)
Filmed entirely
in black and white (but on color stock), The
General is as lush and lavish as any
multi-hued picture you will ever see. Of
particular interest is a scene where
Cahill pilfers a framed gold record off
the wall in what appears to be a routine
burglary. While that may not sound
exceptionally remarkable, Boorman enjoyed
a private chuckle as he was a real-life
victim of the robbing Cahill, who stole
the director’s gold record for Deliverance’s
"Dueling Banjos."
2:05 –
for violence, language and marital
infidelity
|
