★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Watching the young Liam Neeson as an Irish freedom fighter in this historical dramamakes you want to weep for all those times you have sat through his awful performances in the Taken series. For in this biopic he is superb as the principled, steely yet romantic action hero of Neil Jordan’s film, which has been re-released for the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1916.
Despite some mild deviations from historical fact and a reliance on cheap period scenery, this movie has heart, beating at speed as Collins, the guerrilla leader of the Irish Republicans fighting for independence, remains constantly on the run from the police and English soldiers. He hones his skills on the hoof, as the opposing G-men escalate their tactics and assassinations occur on both sides. At a meeting of his war cabinet, Collins notes wryly: “I am the minister for gunrunning, daylight robbery and general mayhem.”
The rest of the cast includes Stephen Rea as a mole, Aidan Quinn as Collins’s right-hand man, and a patrician and wobbly accented Alan Rickman as future leader Éamon De Valera. Julia Roberts rolls up as Kitty Kiernan, everyone’s sweetheart and healer of wounds.
The drama’s most shocking scene is a re-enactment of Bloody Sunday as the Royal Irish Constabulary, bent on reprisal, fire into the crowd at a Gaelic football match in Dublin — in the film in an armoured car, in reality on foot — and kill 13 fans and one player in cold blood.
Neil Jordan, 15, 133min
20th Anniversary Blu-ray and DVD released March 7