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Director
Thaddeus O'Sullivan
Credits
Producers: Jonathan Cavendish, Martha O'Neill
Principal Cast
Kevin Spacey, Linda Fiorentino, Peter Mullan, Helen Baxendale
Category
Feature
The life of infamous Dublin gangster Martin Cahill had already been given the biopic treatment in John Boorman’s 1998 The General; here Thaddeus O’Sullivan turns Cahill into the fictional Michael Lynch (Kevin Spacey) and transforms the story into a piece of postmodern farce. A criminal whose skill at heists is matched by his capacity to evade the law, Lynch’s exploits win him popularity with the public and severe attention from the police. Ambition leads him to attempt the theft of a Caravaggio painting, the consequences of which include collusion with the IRA and threats to his criminal lifestyle. Much of these events have basis in reality but O’Sullivan distorts them in pursuit of creating a comic adventure, with Spacey’s Lynch a benign and entertaining figure entirely lacking in Cahill’s own brutality.
100 minutes, UK/Ireland/Germany/USA, 2000, Colour
ALL YOU NEED IS DEATH 13:00, 20:50
KIDNAPPED 15:15, 18:00
PERFECT DAYS 15:30, 20:30
PNYC: PORTISHEAD – ROSELAND NEW YORK 18.30
THAT THEY MAY FACE THE RISING SUN 13:30, 16:00, 18:10, 20:40
THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE 13:10
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