The General Reviews

To be honest, since I didn’t hear much from the guy anymore, I thought that John Boorman did retire but, apparently, he did release another directing effort a couple of years ago. It was called ‘Queen & Country’ and it was rather obscure like most of his recent work. Anyway, I always had a weak spot for this director’s work and this movie was one of the last he made that I really enjoyed. Basically, it is a rather straightforward but still very well made biopic about Martin Cahill, one o the most notorious criminals coming from Ireland. To play the lead, they made an unexpected choice of going for Brendan Gleeson, someone you would usually see playing the henchman, but Gleeson was really great here. On top of that, the directing was really solid, as expected from this director, and it was just a really interesting story. A couple of years later, they would make another movie about the same Irish gangster, called ‘Ordinary Decent Criminal’ but even though it was not bad, it didn’t really work as Kevin Spacey seemed to be especially miscast in the lead. Anyway, coming back to our main feature, I thought it was a really entertaining heist feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.