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Two new movies about the Troubles - Liam Neeson wows critics

By
MEGHAN SWEENEY,
IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Published Thursday, August 20, 2009, 9:28 AM
Updated Thursday, August 20, 2009, 11:04 AM

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Two new Irish films about the Troubles in Northern Ireland will be released on August 21, and both are receiving rave reviews, which goes to show that audiences are still very much interested in the topic.

“Five Minutes of Heaven” and “Fifty Dead Men Walking” are both based on true stories.

“Five Minutes of Heaven” stars acclaimed Northern Irish actors Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt, and is a thriller that wowed audiences and critics alike at the Sundance Film Festival in January. The film also won both the World Cinema Directing Award and World Cinema Screenwriting Award.

Playing against their own backgrounds, Neeson, who hails from a Nationalist community in Ballymena, County Antrim, plays Alistair Little, a real-life Loyalist killer.

Nesbitt, from a Unionist background in Coleraine, plays Joe Griffin, the real life brother of a man that Neeson’s character has shot dead.

The film features a flashback to 1975, in which we see the then 16-year-old Little assassinate Griffin, a murder that is witnessed by his horrified and helpless 11-year-old-brother Joe. The impact of the callous shooting destroys Joe’s life, and his family never comes to terms with their loss.

It then moves from a re-enactment of those tragic, real events to a fictional but completely believable interpretation of what might happen when these two men finally come face to face for the first time 30 years later. 

"Five Minutes of Heaven" shows how difficult genuine reconciliation between two people from opposite sides of a violent struggle are so scarred by the conflict.

Meanwhile, “Fifty Dead Men Walking” takes us to the Troubles in Northern Ireland during the 1980s.

The film, starring Jim Sturgess, Ben Kingsley and Rose McGowan, is based on the best-selling memoir by Martin McGartland, who was a Catholic in Belfast during the late 1980s but was recruited by British intelligence to spy on the IRA.

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See more: Liam Neeson, James Nesbitt, Film Festival, New York, Entertainment, Celebrity, irish

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