Film Forum

(1998) Brendan Gleeson is the notorious Dublin gangster / folk hero Martin Cahill, who staged daring robberies in the 1980s and earned the enmity of the police, the Church, the government and the IRA. With Jon Voight as an Irish inspector determined to bring Cahill to justice. (In real life, Boorman was one of Cahill’s burglary victims – he made off with Boorman’s gold record of the DELIVERANCE soundtrack.) Winner of the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival.  Approx. 124 mins. 35mm.

Reviews

“Elegant… (Boorman) tells this tale of an Irish underworld original with an unerring instinct for the captivating detail.” 

– Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“(A) peak of splendor…one of the greatest Irish films.”
– David Thomson

“Rarely has a veteran filmmaker rejuvenated his career to such startling effect as John Boorman with THE GENERAL, a fresh-off-the-slab biopic of maverick Irish crime lord Martin Cahill that both challenges and entertains the audience at a variety of levels, as well as reviving the vitality of the helmer’s earliest, mid-‘60s pics. The 65-year-old helmer has not only come up with a pic that puts many British New Wave filmers half his age to shame in its energy and ‘60s esprit, but he also has poured all his love of his adopted homeland, Ireland, into a movie that says more about the rebellious Irish psyche than a heap of overtly political pictures.”
– Derek Elley, Variety