Reviews

I have not seen the first version of this movie, but after watching the 2001 version I am dying to see the 1960's version. This movie is very well done. The costumes are great, the characters are both cool and funny, and Carl Reiner as Saul Bloom/Lyman Zerga was great. I loved the movie from start to finish. The only drawback to the movie is DON CHEADLE'S IMMENSELY INFURIATINGLY ANNOYING ENGLISH ACCENT. If the English accent thing was connected to the plot at all or if the viewer saw a scene of Basher in England, then the accent would make sense but we don't see a scene in England so it's just annoying!! And in fact, there is a scene in the movie (only one that I found) in which Basher (Cheadle) loses his accent. As the robbery gets started, Basher comes in to the hotel room and says "where we at boys?". If he had stuck with his own voice then I would have no problems with this movie and just enjoy it. Overall, good job all around except the accent thing.

OK, let me first get something out of the way. I'm an American of Swedish and Hungarian descent, which means I'm not Irish in any way. That said, I have read extensively about the Troubles and "Michael Collins" is a great film. With a conflict such as the Troubles in Ireland, one cannot be completely unbiased. This film's bias is in its title. The film's hero is definitely Collins, and the other historical figures are underrepresented. I concur with everyone else who has reviewed this film in asking: what compelled Neil Jordan to cast Julia Roberts as Kitty Kiernan? Roberts looks kinda sorta maybe NOT REALLY like Kitty Kiernan, and I'm not going to even start about her accent in the film. As I said in the one-liner above, this is a very good basic view of Collins' life, with all of the most important events in it. He was a 26 year old Volunteer during the April 1916 Easter Rising (although he's a bit older in the film's re-creation of the Rising). He was major player in the Irish War of Independence. He was forced by De Valera (who the film rightly shows is into political opportunism) into negotiating a Treaty with Britain, after which he said he "signed his death warrant", which he had. The film shows all of this, and I commend Mr. Jordan for getting the basics right. However, there are four (that I counted) major mistakes in the film. Firstly, there were no car bombs in this conflict until Daithi O'Connell first came up with the idea in 1972, so the scene in the film with the British official being blown up in his car is false. Secondly, the Tans did not drive an armored personnel carrier into Croke Park. They scaled the walls and machine gunned people for an entire day. Thirdly, Harry Boland was killed in a hotel in Skerries, which is in County Dublin, not Dublin City itself. He was not killed in the sewers. And lastly, I have no idea where Jordan got the idea that Ned Broy was murdered by the Tans, although the scene with Broy being strangled by a rope certainly shows how brutal the Black and Tans were. Broy, in reality, survived the whole thing and went on to become the first head of the Gardai, the unarmed Irish police force, in 1922. Overall, if a person wants to be simply entertained without caring about Irish history, this is a good film. But if one wants to know more about Michael Collins, see this film, then read "Michael Collins: The Man Who Made Ireland" by Tim Pat Coogan. Movies will get you so far, and books will fill in the holes made by Hollywood producers looking for "poetic license" (not getting stuff right) and money.

Applause for Mr. Loach. As a person who is majorly into history (Spanish and Irish in particular), I loved seeing this film for the first time, and that was hundreds of times ago. This movie is about a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, played brilliantly by Ian Hart (who is also in "Michael Collins", another favorite of mine) who goes to Spain in 1936 to fight in the Spanish Civil War. He is persuaded to join the Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista, or POUM. This was a militia dedicated to world revolution, not to socialism in one country. The film very accurately portrays the beginning of the war, when it was clear cut who was on which side. And it keeps with its accuracy in showing how Joseph Stalin manipulated the country of Spain for his own needs, eventually using his influence there to end the life of Leon Trotsky. "Land and Freedom" also shows the May days in Barcelona, when 500 people were killed in a mini civil war within the forces of the anti-fascist Republic. This film is amazing, both in its ability to show how personal the conflict was for many people and how it was not a clear cut good guy bad guy war after 1936. I would like to say that, although when discussing the Spanish Civil War one will always find their bias, Mr. Loach certainly shows his. Very little mention of the mass murder of priests and nuns is included, except in one scene where a priest is shot for informing on the militia. This was not always the case. The militias would go into a town and simply kill clergy because religion to them was fascism. I'm not trying to defend Franco. I am trying to give some wider perspective on what happened. This film is a very good film, but as I said with regards to "Michael Collins", another film Ian Hart is in, one would be better seeing this film, then reading extensively on the subject of the Spanish Civil War to get the full picture.