La sombra del diablo

As a child in Ireland, Frankie McGuire (Brad Pitt) sees his dad gunned down for his involvement with the Irish Republican Army (IRA). As an adult, McGuire has followed in his dad's footsteps. When the IRA decides it needs more firepower, they hatch a plan that involves McGuire going to the United States to pick up a shipment of Stinger missiles. Through American IRA contacts, McGuire adopts a false identity and housing is arranged with a non-involved Irish family headed by New York City cop Tom O'Meara (Harrison Ford).

There is an impression that The Devil's Own is an action film. The Internet Movie Database has it listed as "Action/Drama/Thriller". Although there are some action elements in the film, this is really a tragic drama, almost in a classical sense, and it's best to approach the film with only that genre in mind. The plot is fairly complex and the film tends to move slowly--much more slowly than a typical actioner or thriller.

The heart of the story is McGuire's relationship with O'Meara and his family. All of the other material--the IRA stuff, the mob and terrorist stuff, the New York City cop stuff, and so on, are not the focus. Those elements are present to help establish characterization, to build the relationship and understanding between McGuire and O'Meara, and to provide a justification for the developments in the film, and particularly the conclusion, which all have poignant things to say about the decisions that we make and why we make them.

The film largely succeeds if seen from this dramatic perspective. It's not quite a 10, however, as it always seems slightly distanced from the viewer. It's an 8 out of 10 for me.

(This comment was originally posted on January 16, 2005 and ended with the above. The following was added much later after reading through some other user comments:) We should not forget that even though it takes elements from the real world to construct its story, The Devil's Own is NOT intended to be journalistic or a documentary. There is no claim that it is giving an accurate portrayal of political situations, and it's not intended to campaign for one side or another in a real-world political situation. This is fiction, folks, and should be judged _as fiction_. For that, you should forget about what you know of the real world, and assess the story, images and sounds you experience from your television. Does the story work as a self-contained entity? Are the performances good? Is it visually attractive/rewarding? Those are the kinds of things we should be judging.

For me, The Devil's Own succeeded as a drama about relationships, with its poignancy arrived at primarily by making two people from very different worlds, with very different outlooks, learn to see things from different perspectives.

That's great if you're very knowledgeable about Northern Ireland in the real world and if you have strong opinions about terrorism. However, your knowledge and opinions on that stuff have nothing to do with this film.

A thriller about an IRA gunman (Brad Pitt) who draws an American family into the crossfire of terrorism. Frankie McGuire is one of the IRA's deadliest assassins. But when he is sent to the U.S. to buy weapons, Frankie is housed with the family of Tom O'Meara, a New York cop (Harrison Ford) who knows nothing about Frankie's real identity.

Ford last appeared in a movie two years before this one in 1995's Sabrina (one of Ford's few financial flops) a remake of the 1954 film with its trio of stars, Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, and William Holden. Before that he'd been on a good run with The two Jack Ryan movies (Patriot Games and Clear and Preset Danger) and The Fugitive.

Whilst Brad Pitt was starting to become the Mega Star he is hitting home runs with roles in Interview With A Vampire, Legends Of The Fall, Seven, 12 Monkeys and Sleepers.

You can see what attracted the stars to the movie as the premise is a good one, however once Ford was cast, it was decided to rewrite the script to make his character more central and the script wasn't finished when they started shooting. Ego clashes, budget overruns and long delays saw Pitt tried to walk away from the project. He settled for denouncing the movie as "the most irresponsible bit of film making – if you can even call it that – that I've ever seen." Upon it's release. The movies ending was reshot two days before it's release too.

As expected Ford and Pitt are the best things in this movie, and the parts where this movie works is because of them. It's a shame this was the last movie of Alan Jay Pakula because I like his work as a Director. Be it Klute, All The Presidents Men or Starting Over and Sophie's Choice he showed himself to be a good director.

Worth checking out at least once

I created an account just for this review, due to the low ratings others have given. I mean, it is not the best movie I've seen, but it is not that bad it should be given 1's, 2's, or 3's, etc. It is not an action movie nor a thriller, but there is still some of both in this movie. Yes, 'aye' is a bit overused, but you will get used to it very quickly. I think Brad and Harrison did a fine job here.

In the end I found it enjoyable to watch on a relaxing evening with a glass of whisky. Just 'a movie' to watch without a lot of triggers and explosions or overthinking scenes. I think people should give it a chance and ignore other reviews.

What is it with American-Irish? Some of their richest and most respectable members have poured millions of Dollars into the IRA, harboured some of their members, idealised the notion of a "fight for freedom". Believe me, as a Scot, with William Wallace et al I've always had a certain affinity for heroes. But the IRA are no heroes. They've become Northern Ireland's drug-dealers, extortioners, gangsters. The people of Ireland as whole have had enough of them and their way of terrorising innocent people. May it be the IRA or the UDP, the notion of a Catholic V Protestant jihad has long ago turned into a simple cycle of self-perpetuating violence. These men and women are no longer anything resembling the oh-so glorious Michael Collins, they are terrorists who don't know when to quit and never knew anything but how to fight. These men aren't the Brad Pitts of the world, nor is the British Army an oppressor anymore (considering that over 90% of the locals support the Army, simply because it provides protection). Yet in 1997 we still got the great toss of this movie, showing us how brave Irishmen fight against an onslaught of British stormtroopers and evil S(I)S men. Somehow it seems that America is hell-bent on keeping up the idea of the stiff upper-lip English villain. May it be The Devil's Own, Braveheart, U-571 or most recently The Patriot, Hollywood seems bent on demonising the US' closest ally, both politically and culturally. I may not be a great fan of the English, but even I know what harm stereotypes can do. Perhaps the writer should have gone out to the streets of Belfast and asked ordinary people what they think of the IRA. Perhaps the writer should have also approached a soldier and asked him what it's like to occupy Northern Ireland. Somehow, I have severe doubts that a movie about the post-WW2 SS-"Werwölfe" guerillas would be quite so romanticised.

And this movie has a Riverdance sequence. Oh please....

There seems to be a certain template for making "Oirish" movies in Hollywood. Add some or all of the following ingredients to your movie script - Aran Sweaters, a sub-Deliverance rural setting, comely maidens with red hair, a village idiot (teeth optional), impromptu céilís and dancing at the crossroads, priests, drunken violence and the obligatory "Ooh arr, begorrah" accents and you have an Irish film. And if you want some controversy, why not try to tackle the situation in Northern Ireland by adding in some IRA men for good measure. Unfortunately, the Devil's Own has quite a few of the aforementioned clichés in abundance.

It is a great shame that with a cast and director of this calibre, they couldn't have come up with something better. There have been very few, if any, decent films ever made about Northern Ireland and perhaps it's time Hollywood stopped trying to put forward its own take on it, especially when it is as cack-handed as The Devil's Own. Not only is the whole movie grossly offensive to Irish people, and anyone else with a brain, but it is a dangerous message to be sending out to gullible Irish Americans. It's time film-makers stopped buying into the idea that the IRA are noble warriors when in fact they and others of their ilk are terrorists, pure and simple.

Avoid this like the plague. Brad Pitt's accent is the least of the problems in this film. He just isn't convincing as the cold-blooded killer he is supposed to be - he's far too nice. Harrison Ford is his usual reliable self but too much of the movie is taken up with a largely irrelevant sub-plot featuring himself and Ruben Blades as his police partner. At times, The Devil's Own seems like an IRA film mixed up with NYPD Blue.