Baltimore

Rose Dugdale (Imogen Poots) rebels against her upper-crust English upbringing. She turns into a social agitator, social organizer, and finally a revolutionary. She tries to steal from her home for the IRA and her parents get her arrested. It's 1974. She leads three other men on a mission to steal valuable paintings and ransom them for four IRA prisoners.

The caper isn't much. More could be done to make that exciting. This is more about Rose's journey. It's her character study and that relies on Imogen Poots. Luckily, I really like her acting over these many years and she sells me on this character.

Can't anybody make a movie any more that doesn't jump all over the time line dozens of times? You know how to tell if a movie has a good story? One that starts at the beginning, builds its characters in a cohesive timeline and plot and ends at the ending. That's not everything to a good film, but the sure sign of a badly told story is one that jumps time lines 6 times in the first 15 minutes. It's like a newspaper story. Here's the most exciting part and then the 2nd most exciting part to the 3rd and 4th an 5th, no matter how confusing the little bits are, the audience is supposed to figure out what's going on, which means they're not paying attention to what's actually going on because the writers are lazy and instead of telling a good story, they rely on cheap tricks to obscure the fact that they failed at writing. Everybody thinks they're pulp fiction writers, and they're not. Actual pulp fiction, by the way, told linear stories. They didn't jump around like the film did. He did it well and all these copiers since have not. This would have been a good story to tell by someone who knew how to write. Or direct. Or edit. If it could be re-edited to tell the story as it happened, it might be worth a watch, but as it is, it's a jumbled mess not worth the price of 100 minutes of your time. Half an hour in and they've jumped time lines so many times, I haven't a clue what happens when. Even within the same scenes. Lots of music surges, I guess they thought that was more important. Some of the acting is alright, but then there's anachronisms... not surprising, since they haven't a clue what time periods they were filming anyhow. Well, they've fallen into boring conversational messaging that likely falls a good distance from the truth of the story, so who gives a johnny two-shakes what happens after this? Snore.

I struggled to get through this film. The actors did the best they could with the script, but the screen play seemed to drag and focused on the lead character's mental state too much. I recognize that the movie was about Rose Dugdale, but the film would have been more engaging and enjoyable if it centered on the heist itself. In fact, the movie's title was originally called Baltimore, which was the location of an IRA safe house. Had the story been centered more on Baltimore, and not capturing Rose Dugdales daily life, I may have liked it better. Unfortunately, I found myself bored and uninterested.

In '70s-based Irish true-tale "Rose's War" (aka "Baltimore") young English heiress Imogen Poots rebels against parents Carrie Crowley & Simon Coury to lend her active support to the IRA, leading Tom Vaughan-Lawlor (terrific), Lewis Brophy & Jack Meade in violently robbing a haul of valuable paintings from a stately home, before hiding out while trying to extract a ransom & prisoner release for them. Dermot Crowley offers solid support, and experienced co-writers / co-directors Christine Malloy & Joe Lawlor do chop the timeline cleverly - but it still comes across as only a relatively minor jigsaw puzzle piece in a much bigger picture. It is interesting, but not sensational.

A great film dramatising real historical events! Imogen Poots is a genius actress and manages to speak English with a perfect French accent, as well as Aristocratic RP, in addition to some Irish Gaelic! We get great cinematography and production design! The story is told in a nice surreal way in a non-chronological order! One might say, this is a great example of modern day British/Irish nouvelle vague if the term can be applied to contemporary cinema. The film explores important topics and is steeped in left wing politics such as socialism, republicanism and feminism. It is delightful and it has minimal violence compared to most contemporary films, especially dealing with the IRA, which is probably the reason why not many people watched it. Adorable! Thank you, Imogen and the team!