Tuesday, September 27, 2005
ROBBING HOOD
We saw John Boorman's
today. You gotta see this film.
Brendan Gleason plays the true story of Martin Cahill an infamously clever criminal in Ireland.
He is so convincing in his portrayal that you cannot help come to like the guy even while he is doing very criminal things. He has it on the law at all times.
The law is Jon Voight in a great role and a great Irish accent.
Eventually, it is not the law that gets Cahill. It is the politics. The IRA and the Loyalists. They do not play by any rules but their own.
The direction and structure of the film are really clever. We know the outcome from the outset and set out to see the story unfold to that end.
The 'talk' in this film is really great. A lot of asides. A lot of ingenious bits. We play the subtitles for films like this and get a lot more out of it. The early sequences are very hard for this American ear to get.
You can see the film in black and white, as it was presented on-screen or in 'desaturated color'. We chose the latter and it is quite effective. This is Ireland, after all.
From what I can tell, desaturated color is a type of film or 'video card' and gives a, well, desaturated look. Muted colors. Perhaps a reader knows about this. Email me upper right.
I think that Ebert may be wrong about the film having been shot in black and white as you cannot go from b&w film to any kind of color. Boorman clearly filmed desaturated and then decided to show in black and white.
No matter how it was filmed, I will give this film a 5 out of Netflix5.
