Michael Collins

In preparation for my trip to England/Scotland/Dublin in 3 weeks (!!!Counting down the days!!!), I watched this Neil Jordan directed bio-pic about Michael Collins, the man who near single handedly got England to recognize the need to give Ireland their independence, helped negotiate the treaty and set up the first free democracy in Ireland. Liam Neeson in the lead was fantastic as Collins.

It was, however, a bit of a bloated film. There was just too much politics to put in, and the first half an hour was so full of names/places/Irish lingo that I felt exhausted and confounded. It got much better in the next two hours, and I wasn't confused at all by the end, but I think Jordan bit off more than he could chew. The love story with Julia Roberts seemed to be there out of necessity to have some romance, and though she surprisingly looked very nice in the 1920's fashion (it hid her giant man shoulders quite well), it was pretty blah, no real sparks between them.

As I'm sure the relationships with figures like the president of the de facto country (played by Alan Rickman, who I will watch anything for) and people inside the British govt were really complex and confusing, they were boiled down to simple movie relationships here. It's a shame, I think it made complex important events into black and white (Collins being the good side clearly). It was enjoyable, but it was a bloated epic. A nice, pretty Irish countryside bloated epic, with charismatic Liam Neeson, but still, it wasn't great. It's a big job to portray the single greatest hero of a country when it was recent enough to still be remembered (well, by REALLY old people), I think a narrower view of one aspect of his life would have served better.