Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman, Aidan Quinn, Julia Roberts, Ian Hart
An epic of Shakespearean proportions, this film by self-important director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) is most enjoyable when you ignore its heavy overlay of Irish politics. Neeson, stolid and convincingly physical, sells himself in the part of Collins, the military leader of the Irish struggle against British rule from 1916 to 1922, but his worshipful performance never suggests that Collins had much ego. That's in direct contrast to the more astute Rickman, as Collins's American-born mentor Eamon De Valera, and Quinn, as Collins's best friend and ally Harry Boland. Both seem more realistically vain as they split violently with Neeson over a treaty he signs with London. Roberts plays a farm woman whom both Neeson and Quinn covet, but neither pairing generates much heat. Indeed, the passion of John Ford's more informed 1935 movie about the Irish rebellion, The Informer, is altogether missing from this film. (R)
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