Patriots

Alexis Shannon, a naïve Irish-American grad student in Boston, is recruited by a charming young Irishman out of a waterfront pub to help the IRA blow up a loyalist paramilitary headquarters facility in Belfast. Eager to follow in the footsteps of her grandfather, a soldier in the Irish War for Independence, Alexis sets sail that very evening. The plan appears to work smashingly, but it turns out the recruiter is not what he seems. Alexis finds herself abandoned by her new friends and is forced to take cover in the dark streets of Belfast. As she struggles to find a way back across the sea, Alexis discovers both sides of the conflict are far less monolithic, and far more capable of duplicity and perfidy, than she could ever have imagined, with just a ray of hope somewhere on the horizon.

Ostensibly this is based on a true story. As near as I can tell, it is a *very* loose adaptation of the true tale of John McIntyre's gunrunning on the intercepted S. S. Valhalla, grafted onto a far more innocent, almost "gal-next-door," profile. There were, to be sure, Irish-American Troubles-era gunrunners who fit that bill, though few females that I'm aware of and McIntyre was certainly no "boy next door." The movie is set in a frame story and opens with Alexis turning evidence to the U. S. Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms, a narrative choice which serves mostly to buckle a chilling but obscure link in the conclusion, similarly to what we know of McIntyre. While Alexis's self-critical narrative emerges as credible, she dodges so many lies and so many shady characters that the final truth, here as in the McIntyre drama, must be left to speculation.

Some have reproached the script's refusal to "pick a side," though that was a pretty good move for painting the personal journey of an adventuress who jumped headfirst into a cause she deemed noble but hardly understood at all. The personalities of most of the paramilitaries/terrorists here, whether Republican or Loyalist, come off as rather singular and wooden, though one must remember these were hardened men trying to put on a hard face to march ahead in righteous conflict. The film is obviously low-budget, but for a depiction of the hardhat sections (in the geographic AND demographic sense) of Boston and Belfast that actually works quite well. There's a kind of "seedy prosperous poverty" in every shot which really puts you in the zone. That said, the subpar acting - especially on the part of the leading lady - and the artificial accents are a definite sore point for this movie, and prevent the suspenseful and thoughtful plot progression from drawing us all the way in.

To the best of my knowledge, there aren't many other movies that explore the American involvement in the Troubles, from political lobbying and fundraising to gunrunning and, yes, vigilante intervention. This one is interesting for its study of a highly anecdotal and ad hoc iteration of that involvement, though the much "grander" story is I think still waiting to be told on film at any rate. If you're into all things Irish and enjoy true-to-life suspense thrillers, this is definitely worth your time, despite its technical limitations and professional flaws.