CINEMA: Fifty Dead Men Walking

It takes a very special kind of actor to play a role as ambivalent as that of Martin McGartland in this real life story, so hats off to Jim Sturgess who gives an absolutely monumental performance here.

McGartland was a young man in his twenties during the troubles in Northern Ireland and with his mate Sean (Kevin Zegers) used to sell knocked off clothing around the Catholic areas of Belfast. He was a bit of a lad and a bit of a clown who just wanted to keep himself and his family away from all the violence – from the police on the streets and from the IRA who were doing their own heavy-handed policing of the community. But Martin’s fate was already out of his own hands because he was being watched by one particular British police officer, Fergus (Sir Ben Kingsley), who had seen Martin’s keen intelligence and antipathy to the IRA and then managed to persuade him to become an informant.

With Martin deep undercover within the IRA you can almost smell the tension as he treads a very fine line between truth and lies, always having to watch his back to make sure he is not under suspicion. When he and his sweetheart (Natalie Press) start a family, the atmosphere becomes even more explosive as you realise just what he is putting at stake in order to foil bombings, kneecappings and assassinations.

However, it’s not just Sturgess as Martin who impresses, Kingsley imbues Fergus with such world-weary realism, his voiceovers go beyond despair into some dark, alternative plane of existence while director Kari Skogland uses great kinetic camerawork to give the movie edge. However, the violence really is brutally awful – and seems even more so as it is meted out in such a casual way, as if it is the norm. So, not for the squeamish, but impressive nonetheless.

Dee Pilgrim