IMDb #188 Review: In the Name of the Father (1993)

Source: Wikipedia

Since it is set in turbulent twentieth century Ireland, this movie starts in medias res with a bang, gets back to the bang, then features a series of smaller, more emotionally potent bangs till the closing credits.

The hero, a longhaired punk, lives in IRA-ravaged Belfast with his buds. Their white-collar dads ship them off to London to grow up. Every fun thing our hero does there acquires sobering significance. He shacks up with a hippy commune. He plunders a hooker's sex dungeon. Homeless and penniless, he squabbles with a hobo over a monogrammed bench.

Then a pub blows up. He's extradited from Ireland. Through torture, the British justice system (composed entirely of angry men in suits) convicts him of the bombing. Moreover, his family and friends are railroaded as criminal associates.

The courtroom drama transitions to a prison drama. As cellmates, the straitlaced dad and wayward son get all the quality time they were missing. Years and years and years of it. Even after the justice system catches and convicts and incarcerates the real IRA pub-bombers.

Furious yet? Good. Because it's based on a true story, which manages to be even more depressing.

The film dodges melodrama by rays of hope. Inspiring moments of prisoner solidarity. Picketing protesters and a lone lawyer campaigning for their release. The emotional yo-yo of a strained father-son relationship. Intense instances of Daniel Day-Lewis's insane method acting.

And when the critical evidence comes to light, your heart spreads broken wings and soars. Kinda. Then the ending, and the awful reality behind it, sticks in your chest like a pulmonary embolism.

133 minutes.