Prismark10
Five minutes of Heaven is a rare foray into British television for Irish actor, Liam Neeson. The first part of the film shows the killing of 19 year old Jim Griffin by a 17 year old Alistair Little in 1975. The second part of the film depicts a reconciliation meeting for television between Alistair Little and Jim's brother Joe, three decades later.Although the incident of the killing is apparently based on true events the rest of the story is fictional. It is the one of many stories we will encounter in the years to come, now the Troubles are over and people look back to the past with different perspectives.The story is essentially about two damaged men and still damaged over 30 years later unable to let go, one wanting forgiveness, the other unwilling to forgive.James Nesbitt has the more showy role with nervous ticks, talkative, with pent up frustration as he is about to meet the killer of his brother and has revenge on his mind. Neeson who ironically found a new wind with cinema audiences in the Taken films, is more still, calm, assured but bitterly regretting the mistakes of his past when he wanted acceptance from the elders of his community and the final scene when he does get closure is priceless.This is a small scale film which has something big to say. With Neeson, it attracts an audience and he delivers. Its not a crash, bang, wallop type of film though. It is thoughtful and a slow burn one. Both Nesbitt and Neeson carry the story.
Bribaba
Ninety minutes of pure tension as Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt battle it out through Northern Ireland's Truth and Reconciliation program. The protagonists are based on two real characters from the 'troubles' in the 70s, and both co-operated on the script, though separately for reasons which will become clear. They are almost brought together by a TV program on the subject - a bitter and satirical subplot on the vacuous nature of television emerges here. Neeson and Nesbitt are terrific with the former's guilt but inner calm being counterpointed by the latter's ferocious quest for revenge. It's all held together and given a cinematic quality by the direction of Oliver Hirchbiegel, who also made the excellent Downfall.
secondtake
Five Minutes of Heaven (2009)I have a confession--when the movie started I thought, okay, another pro-IRA movie with a heart. And it's not--it's a beautifully balanced movie about the personal horrors of the Northern Ireland bloodshed and the longterm aftermath as participants struggle to keep going.The two main actors are both from Northern Ireland. Liam Neeson plays a Protestant who as a teenage killed a Catholic worker as part of the tit-for-tat violence of the time. James Nesbitt, a Roman Catholic, plays the brother of the man who was killed, and as a witness to the crime he holds a deep grudge about the murder. And in a key act of political insight, the actors were born on the opposite sides--Neeson was raised Catholic and Nesbitt raised Protestant. The theme of the film is reconciliation in the mold of South African leader Nelson Mandela. The core of the movie is shot in a fancy Irish mansion where television crews are going to watch as the two men, mortal enemies decades before, make an effort to somehow move on, in public, on t.v.How it goes is for you to see. The murder in the 1970s is fact, easy enough to believe, and the meeting of the men is fiction. Nesbitt is utterly terrific. You might think he's overacting (he is, of course, overacting) but it's appropriate, and gives this non-action film some intensity. Neeson is strong in his restraint and in the one main scene where he gives a well-written speech about how to understand these horrors he is also terrific.The filming is extremely simple and in fact the whole scenario is relatively linear, even with all the flashbacks. There are some turns to the events by the last half hour, and in a way this is both the dramatic high and the disappointing low of the film (it resorts to somewhat corny and not quite smartly filmed sequences I won't elaborate). But overall the point is so strong and well meant it's hard to worry too much about whether it's a masterpiece. It's not. It's sometimes slow, it says stuff we probably have absorbed pretty well by now, and it isn't very complex. But what it does do it does with compassion and conviction.
Hitchcoc
I really had a hard time knowing what to make of this film. The opening is striking as a group of young Irish men plot the killing of another because you have to do something in the hornet's nest they are living in. Not only do they accomplish the killing, they destroy the life of a boy, the victim's brother, who witnessed everything. The most unfortunate thing is that this boy is blamed by his mother for not doing something to stop things. It then moves many years in the future. The two men are to meet on a kind of talk show. Incredible tension builds as the killer (played by Liam Neeson) gives some testimony and awaits the man whose life he pretty much destroyed. The outstanding thing about this film that there are no sides. As Neeson's character said, at the time he was proud. He went to bars and was hailed as a hero. He also knows that there is no forgiveness, no sorrow that can change anything. We await their confrontation. I will not comment on the events that follow. Suffice it to say that they are extremely intense and, I thought, satisfying.
AD
