Main Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Adrian Dunbar, Jon Voight, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Angeline Ball, Sean McGinley
Release Year: 1998
Country: IE/UK
Run Time: 123 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
John Boorman, who won the 1998 Cannes Film Festival's Direction award for this film, previously won the same Cannes award almost three decades earlier for his Leo the Last (1969) about an alienated aristocrat in a London slum. Shot in widescreen color (but printed in sharp black-and-white), The General is a biographical portrait of ruthless Irish crime lord Martin Cahill, shot down outside his home by a single assassin on August 18, 1994. After this opening, the film then unfolds as a lengthy flashback of the events that led to his death, sketching in the raw beginnings of the youthful Martin (Eamonn Owens of The Butcher Boy) and moving into the Dublin slum of Hollyfield to show the adult Cahill (Brendan Gleeson) and his link to a local cop, Inspector Ned Kenny (Jon Voight). Various thefts enable Cahill to support his wife Frances (Maria Doyle Kennedy), his four children, and his sister-in-law Tina (Angeline Ball). As the years pass, Cahill rises as a mobster, bamboozling cops, constructing airtight alibis, pulling off a near-impossible jewel heist, and setting up a menage a trois with Frances and Tina. (Both actresses were seen previously in Alan Parker's The Commitments). ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
Review
By the time John Boorman shot The General, its subject had already entered the realm of contemporary folklore. A gangster killed by the police in 1994, Martin Cahill gets the full treatment from Boorman, who does an impressive job of explaining his way of life without excusing it, showing the desperation of his origins without glamorizing his crimes. He's assisted by a tremendously believable performance by Brendan Gleeson, who characterizes Cahill as a man who compensates for a doughy slow-wittedness with an almost scary singlemindedness. (One particularly inspired touch involves Gleeson's seemingly endless supply of shirts featuring risqué cartoon pigs.) Boorman's feel for urban Irish grit, black humor, and an evenhanded approach to his characters helps make the film a standout amidst contemporary gangland chronicles. ~ Keith Phipps, All Movie Guide
Eanna McLiam; Tom Murphy; Paul Hickey; Tommy O'Neill; John O'Toole; Ciaran Fitzgerald; Ned Dennehy; Vinny Murphy; Roxanna Williams; Eamonn Owens - Martin Cahill as a boy; Colleen O'Neill
Credit
Jina Jay - Casting, Maeve Paterson - Costume Designer, Kevan Barker - First Assistant Director, John Boorman - Director, Ron Davis - Editor, Kieran Corrigan - Executive Producer, Betsy Davis - Executive Producer, P.J. Pettitte - Executive Producer, Richie Buckley - Composer (Music Score), Derek Wallace - Production Designer, Seamus Deasy - Cinematographer, John Boorman - Producer, Brendan Deasy - Sound/Sound Designer, Doug Turner - Sound/Sound Designer, John Boorman - Screenwriter, Paul Williams - Book Author
The General is a true film about Dublin criminal Martin Cahill, who pulled off several daring heists in the early 1980s, and attracted attention from the Garda, IRA, and UVF. The film was directed by John Boorman, filmed in 1997 and released in 1998. Brendan Gleeson played Cahill, Adrian Dunbar played his close friend Noel Curley, and Jon Voight played Inspector Ned Kenny.
The film was based on the book of the same name by Irish journalist Paul Williams, who is also crime editor of Ireland's best-selling tabloid, The Sunday World, and not forgetting that the movie was based on the criminal mastermind, Martin Cahill.
Director John Boorman was himself one of Cahill's burglary victims. This event was dramatized in the film in a scene where Cahill breaks into a home, stealing a gold record and pilfering a watch from the wrist of a sleeping woman. The gold record, which Cahill later broke in disgust after discovering it was not made of gold, was awarded for the score of Deliverance, Boorman's best-known film.
The General was filmed in colour, but it has been released in both a colour version and a black-and-white version.
