Film Review
Fifty Dead Men Walking

Dolores was right, “It’s the same old thing since 1916”. But for the past decade, the fighting was not being fought with “their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns”, but with diplomacy. And it was working… until the murder of two British soldiers by the Real IRA at the Massereene army base in Antrim last month.

The murder of these two soldiers has caused considerable anxiety of the possibility of Northern Ireland once again drowning in bloodshed. These murders were the first deaths of British soldiers in Northern Ireland by terrorists since 1997 and they show us that the division of Ireland, forgotten by those of us not in Belfast, is still a very real issue. Ireland remains divided. Peace between Unionist and Nationalist communities is fragile. Ireland is still tormented.

This re-emergence of The Troubles (which officially ended in 1998) to the news agenda doesn’t make the political drama Fifty Dead Men Walking any more relevant, but it certainly provides the movie with a contemporary frame.

Unrest in Northern Ireland has been a perennial focus for filmmakers. The conflict makes for good cinema. The issues are complex, the morality fuzzy and everyone has an opinion (the Irish were born with an opinion, we are told in Fifty Dead Men Walking). Movies such as The Outsider (1979) In the Name of the Father (1993) and Resurrection Man (1998), to name only a few, have recognised this and exploited it with remarkable effect.

Last year’s Hunger superbly brought Bobby Sands’s painful story to life to again show us that not only does Northern Ireland have a lot to teach us but it also provides remarkably deep and thought-provoking content, so easily packaged in hard-hitting emotion suitable for powerful cinema.

Fifty Dead Men Walking is a vastly different movie to Hunger, yet it shares one important similarity. A similarity that few movies about the Northern Ireland conflict share: it is beautiful. Both Hunger and Fifty Dead Men Walking are built with strangely affecting imagery that comes from the ugliest sources. Director Kari Skogland searches for and finds the beauty amid chaos and brutality. Scenes filled with bloodshed, death and horrendous torture, are framed with such care, lit with such subtlety and are so heightened with sensual awareness that that we are forced to sigh at the beauty while we gasp at the horror.

The beauty, however, is simply a vehicle that helps Skogland immerse us in a movie that is essentially a highly political, partisan, inciting drama that deals with one of the most difficult to understand ethno-political conflicts.

Inspired by Martin McGartland’s incredible autobiography, Fifty Dead Men Walking takes us on to the streets of eighties Belfast and into the mind of informant McGartland (Jim Sturgess). McGartland managed to infiltrate the IRA as a tout supplying the former Special Branch with information regarding terrorist operations (the title is a reference to the number of people his information may have saved. A remarkable number when one considers that only 500 soldiers have died in the nearly 40 years of conflict.).

In the movie, McGartland supplies this information to Fergus (Ben Kingsley) and the two form a friendship as fragile as the current peace accord. These two characters drive the movie and allow it to grow beyond its mixture of politics and violence (are they ever separated?).

McGartland’s story is remarkable. Yet as far as cinema stories go, it is practically clichéd and it needs the “true story” tag to give it weight. That is not to say that the movie doesn’t add anything to the genre. It does, thanks largely to the manner in which Skogland seems to approach her directing – as a tool to squeeze emotion from every scene.

Yet this doesn’t blind her and she makes sure that she concentrates on the motives of the emotion. Snitch movies are driven by psychology and for them to work we need to understand why the betrayer is choosing to betray. While a significant effort is made by Skogland to explore McGartland’s motives, a clear answer is never provided and McGartland’s moral ambiguity adds to the already confusing story.

Yet this is not necessarily a negative. We see McGartland colluding with the oppressors and we see his sensitivity, his tenderness, his capacity to love. We also see his love of his country and his dreams of a united Ireland and while these feelings are at odds, we also see how at odds the character is with them. McGartland is tormented by his decision and it seems the only thing making him a betrayer are his moral conflicts and his loathing of violence.

We can see this conflict in McGartland when Fergus tells him, “the price of a conscience is death and none of us can afford it.” McGartland has a conscience, and we feel he will pay the price.

Skogland is not helped by a script that at times is woefully weak. “In war, truth is the first casualty and information is more powerful than bullets,” we get told with gravitas early in the movie – a precursor to the numerous twee philosophising that runs throughout the script. It is unnecessary philosophising, the audience can see the issues, can attach significance and don’t need didactic sound bites, which strip intelligence with every over-stressed point.

Yet, we can overlook this, thanks largely to Skogland, the power of Sturgess’s performance and the fact that the movie remains at all times even-handed. No sides are picked and no moral judgement provided – an outstanding achievement.

Fifty Dead Men Walking is as relevant today as it would have been in the eighties and nineties. As an artistic expression it realises that The Troubles deeply troubles viewers and it exploits this wonderfully.

The violence certainly did “causes silence”, to go back to Dolores, but movies like Fifty Dead Men Walking show that the silence caused by a decade of peace doesn’t mean that Northern Ireland isn’t screaming.

• Movies about the Northern Ireland conflict

* Bloody Sunday (2002)
* The Boxer (1997)
* Cal (1984)
* Circle of Deceit (TV) (1993)
* The Devil’s Own (1997)
* Divorcing Jack (1998)
* An Everlasting Piece (2000)
* Force of Duty (TV) (1992)
* The Gentle Gunman (1952)
* Harry’s Game (TV film) (1982)
* Hennessy (1975)
* Henri (TV) (1994)
* Hidden Agenda (1990)
* Holy Cross (TV 2003)
* In the Name of the Father (1993)
* The Informant (1997)
* Love Lies Bleeding (TV) (1993)
* Nothing Personal (1995)
* Odd Man Out (1947)
* The Outsider (1979)
* Resurrection Man (1998)
* Some Mother’s Son (1996)
* This Is the Sea (1997)
* Titanic Town (1998)
* Tyrone Fermanagh (2006; Short Film)
* With or Without You (1999)
* The End of the World Man (1985)
* Mickybo and Me (2005)
* Blown Away (1994)
* A Further Gesture (1997)
* Irish Eyes (2004)
* The Jackal (1997)
* The Long Good Friday (1980)
* Patriot Games (1992)
* A Prayer for the Dying (1987)