Review: Fifty Dead Men Walking

Fifty Dead Mean Walking, starring Sir Ben Kingsley and likely future star Jim Sturgess, tells the true tale of Irishman Martin McGartland's infiltration of the Irish Republican Army in the tale end of the 20th century, albeit in fictional fashion. Let's just say that they give new meaning to the phrase "based on a true story".

First, I'll say that I want to have liked this movie, but I think in order to do so, I'm going to have to rent the DVD and turn on the subtitles. I understood nearly as much of the dialogue watching A Year Ago in Winter yesterday (which was in German, for those of you who didn't catch that detail). Now while those of you who can not only understand but actually spew forth that thick Irish accent may make fun of me, I just have to be honest and say that sometimes it sounds a little bit like English. But only a little. Often times, it takes me ten minutes to get into the swing of it, but I never did get into rhythm with this movie. But what I did catch:

Martin (Sturgess) is a young thug peddling stolen goods when he catches the eye of the Brits. An agent code-named Ferguson (Kingsley) convinces him to infiltrate the ranks of the IRA and feed him information that will save lives. Eventually, the Brits blow his cover in favor of letting a bunch of people die, and Martin becomes a wanted man. He gets caught, and his escape, which is represented mostly as it happened, is amazing. The part about being relocated to Canada and being shot there -- well, that somehow didn't make it to wikipedia, so it must not be true.

Along the way, Martin fathers a couple children, resists a beautiful IRA intelligence officer (a red-headed Rose McGowan), really pisses off some mates, and somehow gets through initiation into the IRA and rises to the post of operation leader without actually killing anyone. Okay, I'm not complaining. I actually enjoyed the bits that I could catch, and I'll probably add this one to my Netflix queue when it comes out someday. And then I'll be able to give it a rating that it deserves. For now I'll throw a dart at a board... My imdb rating: 7/10.