BEFORE: Happy St. Patrick's Day! I've had corned beef four times in the last week, so I won't say I'm sick of it, but I've had it a lot. Last Monday there was a staff lunch at a restaurant and I was late, so I had to order fast, so a corned beef sandwich was quick - late Thursday I had a can of hash for dinner, and then Saturday we went to the diner and they had the corned beef & cabbage special. And then today my lunch place in Manhattan had it in the mix, of course. I always ask for a little container of vinegar on the side, even if they just have balsamic, that works. When I was a kid my mother cooked this meal, and in true Irish fashion, she boiled everything in one pot - the cabbage, the carrots, the potatoes and the cut of beef - but rather than mixing the flavors together, I found that tended to drain all the flavor OUT of the vegetables because they were boiled for so long. So with the vinegar I at least was able to add some flavor back into it, and that still holds true today, because this is still a traditionally all-boiled meal. Great Irish cuisine, it just needs some more flavor when you cook it that way.
Liam Neeson carries over again from "Blacklight".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Belfast" (Movie #4,377)
THE PLOT: A disillusioned hitman comes out of retirement for one last job when an IRA bomber on the run from the law arrives in his sleepy Irish village.
AFTER: All this time and I still don't really understand "The Troubles", though I seemed to explain it OK in my review of "Belfast", that kind of thing just doesn't stick in my brain. Catholics are more prominent in regular Ireland, and Protestants have Northern Ireland. I' sure it's Britain's fault, somehow, which means it's Henry VIII's fault. But once you get into terms like "Unionist" or "Nationalist", you lose me. Unionists are pro-UK and Nationalists want to be separate? Not sure. Catholics in Northern Ireland were the minority, so they encountered discrimination and then they protested against that, so that led to car bombs and riots in the streets. Am I even close?
Anyway, it doesn't matter - all we need to know is that this group of four who blew up a car bomb in Northern Ireland came down south to hide out, in the little town of Glencolmcille in Donegal county. Finbar Murphy is a WWII veteran who lives there, he came back from the war to find that his wife had died, and after drinking a lot he found work for the local crime boss as a contract killer. We see him take someone out to a very quiet forest, he makes that person dig a hole, and then there's a new grave and he plants a tree on top. Well, at least he's thinking about forest preservation, right? A very ecological hit-man. But I guess what we're seeing is Finbar's last job, he wants out of this life, which forces the crime boss to hire a new guy, Kevin, as his new killer.
Finbar's cover is running a book store, and he's friends with the local police officer, they go out in the woods and shoot tin cans together, and somehow Finbar always wins - no, that's not suspicious at all, at least not to the police officer. Finbar also is starting a relationship with his neighbor, Rita - but this life is disrupted when those IRA car bombers come to town, one of them, Curtis, is staying with his ex-sister-in-law Sinead, who is the local bartender, in a trailer while the other three hide out in a remote shack. But Finbar sees Sinead's daughter fishing one day and notices bruises, so that tips him off that she might be being abused. So he befriends the guy, and takes him out to the forest to show him his guns, and, well, he's not coming back from that one.
But Curtis's sister is the leader of the group of bombers, and when he disappears, she's just not going to give up until she figures out what happened to him. So that leads her to the local mob boss, who gives up Finbar's name, since he's no longer employed by him. This leads to the three bombers going around town, shaking people down until they find this Finbar guy, and they set up a meeting in the local pub, where Finbar says he'll give up the killer, even though it's him. The bombers bring a bomb to a gun fight, thinking they'll blow up the pub if things get dicey. Sure, there's a lot going on but it's really just one climactic gun and bomb and knife and grenade fight, with a long slow build leading up to it.
Still, it's definitely the most Irish film that I had on my list, after dealing with "The Secret of Kells" and those other animated films last year, along with everything that had Brendan Gleeson in it, like "The Banshees of Inisherin".
Directed by Robert Lorenz (director of "The Marksman")
Also starring Kerry Condon (last seen in "The Banshees of Inisherin"), Jack Gleeson, Ciaran Hinds (last seen in "The Weight of Water"), Sarah Greene (last seen in "Burnt"), Colm Meaney (last seen in "Free Birds"), Desmond Eastwood, Niamh Cusack (last seen in "Hereafter"), Conor MacNeill (last seen in "Belfast"), Seamus O'Hara (last seen in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"), Mark O'Regan (last seen in "Angela's Ashes"), Valentine Olukoga, Michelle Gleeson, Bernadette Carty, Conor Hamill, Anne Brogan, Laura Hughes, Joe Gallagher (last seen in "The Boxer").
RATING: 6 out of 10 shotgun shells
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