Baltimore

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.

Compelled to be presented to the Queen as a debutante in return for an Oxford University education, Rose Dugdale (Imogen Poots) rebels from a fairly early age. Her privileged upbringing - as so often happens - leads her to detest the very hands that fed her in her childhood. Meantime, the troubles in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s are only increasing and after a trip to a training camp in Cuba, she returns a fully capable, bomb-making, terrorist - with a brain and a conscience. A plot is devised to rob a stately home of some valuable Goya, Rubens and Vermeer paintings and hold them as hostage for £500,000 and the freedom of two hunger striking IRA prisoners incarcerated in the UK. What now ensues is a rather weakly constructed speculation as to just how this shrewd plan was executed and of the aftermath. The story is an interesting history - but with the timelines dancing around all over the place and the performance of Poots a bit hit or miss, I found the pace of the film too bitty. We are all too often left dangling when a storyline is being developed and talking of development, there is very little to inform us about who the real Dugdale was. The screenplay doesn't shy away from describing the radicalisation here nor of some of it's concomitant brutality but somehow her vitriolic detestation of the British state is left completely unexplained. This subject could make for a strong political documentary on a woman who was clearly dedicated to her cause, but as a drama - this doesn't ever really engage.

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.

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.

Since there are reviews stating that this movie is boring, I thought I would explain why it's not. Boredom is self imposed, and Baltimore is certainly slow. However, the acting is good enough and the production is at a high level. I've always liked Imogen, yet in Baltimore she does shine, she's intense, insecure and complicated. Imogen does demand enough attention to overshadow Tom Vaughan-Lawlor's great presence and acting chops. This is not an action movie, it's an exploration into the mindset and journey of Rose Dugdale, so it's leans closer to a "dynamic" documentary. I can't find anything wrong with this movie. If you have the patience it's quite intriguing...