Resurrection Man (1998)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Good movie but grossly overrated

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

In 1975 in Belfast a group of young men, led by Victor Kelly start to get involved in the loyalist violence that goes on around them. However Kelly's enthusiasm and love for violence goes beyond the needs of the terrorist organisations and begins to spiral out of control.This story was written by Eoin McNamee based on his own book. He insists it is fiction but the film makers seem happy to forget that he said this and use it as truth at times. However this isn't as bad as things like Sunday, Bloody Sunday, Name of the Father etc, this doesn't seek to make political statements. What it does want to do is look at the character of Kelly – and as such it is interesting if not informative.The level of violence is too high although it is delivered with style and energy. However this is a problem, the film wants us to look at Kelly as vicious – taking pleasure in the killing, but it judges him as well. It judges him – even though all the violence is stylish and almost glamorised. Double-standards? Have cake and eat it? The cast are good, but Townsend is the standout – he is powerful in the lead role. Nesbitt is as good as he always is – although his character is not really involved in the film and his presence is a little distracting at times. Hannah is good despite the moustache – though mind you, after his embarrassment in the Mummy films, it's good to see him in anything.Overall this is watchable, but it has double standards. It is guilty of enjoying the violence and the life style just as much as Kelly does.

Resurrection Man, by Eoin McNamee, is a masterpiece in visceral storytelling and in evoking the back streets of Belfast.This ''adaptation'' loses almost all of these qualities and leaves us feeling disgusted we wasted our time watching this tripe.Director Marc Evens thinks that he's Scorsesse and that he can make the Northern Ireland troubles cool by using the same techniques(slow-motion,freeze,70's music) and it just shows what it really is.A pale imitation of a masterpiece (Goodfellas) and a terrible adaptation

Stylishly shot, but predictable, woefully under-developed script with patchy performances other than the compelling lead male actor. Seems to believe it's about violence, but incoherent story and directorial approach to the ultra violence the film purports to explore, results in triple X rated pop video. Not just bad, but stupid on quite a deep level.

Eoin MacNamee's screenplay loses some of the visceral quality so powerfully evoked in his own novel, and the sense of place suffers badly from the movie having been shot entirely outside of Belfast.A heavily fictionalised account of the life of notorious Loyalist murderer Lenny Murphy, the film admirably conveys the arbitrary nature of sectarian violence in Belfast in the 1970's, and the performances are universally excellent. Not for the squeamish, the film reminds us just how far Northern Ireland has had to come on its present peace process.