Written and Directed by Neil Jordan; starring Liam Neeson, Aidan Quinn Stephen Rea, Alan Rickman and Julie Roberts.
Bluesy: Aside from being a very enjoyable "sweeping epic" that put me a leg up on a bit of Irish history I hadn’t known about, and which I found very entertaining… I’d like to mention that MICHAEL COLLINS has a one of the highest "Hunk" counts of any film I’ve seen this year. Trap, I don’t expect you to understand… but it’s not often that a girl gets to swoon over the likes of Liam Neeson, Aidan Quinn, Stephen Rea and Alan Rickman all in one film. The fact that the story was so good, the pacing for such a long film so swift and the characters so multi-layered seems all a plus to me. I could watch these guys for another two hours, and then some… I’d even vote for a sequel, if they could resurrect Liam Neeson. Maybe do something like Hamlet, where Rickman is haunted by the ghost of Michael Collins. What do you think?
Trap: Well, it might fill in some of the gaps this film left me with at least. I’ll grant you that this film really was a "sweeping epic", and one which manages to avoid a lot of the pitfalls of the genre – possessing none of the ponderousness or self-important earnestness of GANDHI and the like. Still, I went into the theatre not knowing all that much about Michael Collins and came out not knowing a whole lot more. Although I learned that it was Collins who brokered the deal that led to Ireland’s partition and that he was put up to it by Eamonn de Valera and other more cynical members of the Irish resistance, I never really got a sense of him as a person -- why the cause of Irish independence was so important to him, and why he ultimately compromised. The brief glimpses we get of his personal life add little to this and in any case do little to illuminate him as a three-dimensional human being.
That said, I do have to give Neil Jordan credit for evoking the time in which the film takes place. His direction is confident and assured, at times achieving the pop dynamism one associates with the Warner Brothers gangster films of the 30’s. In addition he doesn’t stack the deck in favor of his heroes by making them noble martyrs either – although he gives full shrift to the brutality of British rule, he doesn’t shy away from portraying the lengths the IRA went to in order to combat it. The depiction of one particular campaign of retaliation – in which members of the British secret police are summarily gunned down in their bedrooms or in similarly helpless situations – is particularly harrowing, regardless of one’s sympathies.
Bluesy: You’re such a killjoy. And I don’t agree that we didn’t learn much about Collins from this film. I thought we learned quite a bit. I liked the film’s subtleties… especially in a historical piece that could’ve been very melodramatic and heavy handed… I thought Jordan’s touch with his characterizations were complex enough so that you did understand the inner turmoil they were undergoing. The task of depicting the start of a civil war, by it’s very nature is dramatic enough… and Neeson’s character, aside from being hunky, underwent a vast change from staunch in-your-face mayhem-maker, to scapegoat policy- maker, and then onto someone who had learned that no agreement of this scope is without cost and compromise. The choices one makes are never without consequence, was a powerful theme in this film. I thought there was a true growth in the Michael Collins character, and Liam’s performance depicted that very naturally for me. By film’s end, he looked like a defeated politician who’d had all his former beliefs questioned. He needed a serious hug (Lucky Julia to be able to give one to him. How come she gets to have all the fun?)
Trap: Perhaps I merely expected more of the film, given Jordan’s obvious talents and the fact that this was evidently a long-time dream project of both his and Neeson’s. It may be that the history of modern Ireland is simply to complex to be told in one movie or through the life of one man, but in the end it seems to promise more than it delivers. To be sure, it’s a film with a great many virtues, but one that when all’s said and done still seems somewhat hollow for all its intensity.
Bluesy: And I really enjoyed it (by the way, somebody’s gotta say something about Alan Rickman’s great performance. Even when he’s bad, he’s never BAD. I’ve yet to see him in a movie and be bad in it. Although I do miss him playing more sympathetic characters like the one in TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY. He’s a great villain in this though; and Stephen Rea is affable as always, cute too… and Aidan, well he’s got those great blue eyes). Hunk factor aside, MICHAEL COLLINS was really a terrific film all around.
Bluesy and Trap Rate-a-Flick:
Michael Collins
Great 
Good
