Putting `the General' in the picture

It begins at the end. John Boorman's film, The General, opens on the afternoon of August 18th, 1994 when the notorious Dublin criminal Martin Cahill leaves his house and gets into his black Renault 5. A lone gunman, believed to be a member of the Provisional IRA, rushes towards the car and shoots Cahill at close range through the window.

A caption advises the viewer: "All the events depicted in the film occurred and contributed to the legend of Martin Cahill, aka The General." Based on the best-selling book of the same name by the Sunday World crime correspondent, Paul Williams, The General was written, produced and directed by Boorman. The 64-year-old English filmmaker has lived in Co Wicklow since the early 1970s and his work includes such acclaimed films as Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur and Hope and Glory.

On Thursday it was announced that The General would represent Ireland as one of the 22 international productions selected to compete at next month's Cannes Film Festival. Shot in gleaming black-and-white by Seamus Deasy and accompanied by an atmospheric jazz score by Richie Buckley, Boorman's film is a gritty thriller and a vividly etched character study which could be a formidable contender for prizes at Cannes.

Beginning and ending with Martin Cahill's murder, The General is structured as one extended flashback which traces his life and crimes, beginning with his childhood in Dublin's inner-city slums when he already is drifting into petty crime. The teenage Cahill is played by Eamon Owens from The Butcher Boy.

Years later the adult Cahill - played in a bravura performance by Brendan Gleeson - is actively pursuing his criminal career. He dismisses threats from the IRA when his gang moves in on its heroin-dealing patch, and he meets the UVF to do a deal on the paintings he and his gang steal from Sir Alfred Beit's collection at Russborough House.

When Cahill's wife encourages him to buy a house, he buys his Cowper Downs property in his sister's name so that he may continue to draw the dole. Cahill's bizarre marital arrangements involved having sex with - and children by - both his wife, Frances, and her sister, Tina. And according to the film Frances suggested this herself. "Keep it in the family," she says. The sisters are played by Maria Doyle Kennedy and Angeline Ball from The Commitments.

When the owner of the Cowper Downs property refuses to accept payment in cash, the film shows Cahill bringing £80,000 in cash to the bank - named the National Celtic Bank in the film - where he exchanges it for a bank draft. Then his gang steals back the cash while Cahill sets up an alibi by visiting Inspector Ned Kenny, a composite character played by Jon Voight with a soft Kerry accent. "You've made a right bollix out of me," says Kenny when he realises he has been conned.

Cahill is shown to take mischievous pleasure in running rings around the Garda. In one sequence set when there was heavy round-the-clock security at his home, Cahill drives for hours through the Dublin mountains with a squad car in close pursuit. But Cahill has stowed a container of petrol in the boot which allows him to make his getaway when the squad car runs out of fuel.

John Boorman told The Irish Times yesterday that it was simplistic to describe his depiction of the Garda in the film as Keystone Kops-like. "The film is made from the point of view of Cahill, and he took his pleasure from making fools of the police. What you see in the film is Cahill's point of view of the police. There were these various incidents where he did make fools of them. However, the Inspector Kenny character is a very serious officer, so is Sgt Higgins. There are no scenes in the film which are not seen from Cahill's perspective."

The film also shows rough treatment of Cahill by the Garda. Twice in the film he is kicked on the ground by detectives. An officer urinates on him as he is about to crawl through a garden hatch. Another sends in a ferret to kill Cahill's beloved pigeons.

The film says the heavy Garda surveillance outside Cahill's home had disappeared on the day he was killed. When Inspector Kenny is asked if there was collusion between the Garda and the IRA in setting up the murder, he does not reply. The inclusion of that scene was deliberate, John Boorman says.

"The fact is that there was never any arrest nor was there much of an attempt to find the assassin. They would argue that the removal of the Tango squad, the 90 men on surveillance duty, did not happen overnight, that it was thinned down gradually. But that is what happened and clearly the IRA knew when they removed the surveillance."

Boorman's film pulls no punches in depicting Cahill's capacity for menace and violence. Following Cahill's meticulously plotted heist of a jewellery wholesalers, a bomb explodes in the car of the Garda forensic witness. A chilling sequence depicts Cahill intimidating a robbery witness by breaking into her bedroom late at night and threatening her. When he suspects a gang member of keeping a gold bar for himself, Cahill crucifies the man on a pool table.

The film does not show the widescale tyre-slashing which Cahill inflicted on his Cowper Downs neighbours. A scene depicting that activity was cut in the editing process, Boorman says. The film contains some dramatic licence, as when Cahill wears a Groucho Marx disguise in a courtroom, which never would have been permitted, and it employs the cinematic shorthand of putting the undercover surveillance officers in uniform to explain visually who they are.

Meanwhile, Cahill is shown to be affectionate and caring towards the women in his life and their children - and as a philanthropic Robin Hood type to the people who queue for hand-outs he supplies from the proceeds of his crimes. Even though some of his gang are involved in drug-dealing, Cahill, who did not drink or take drugs, repeatedly condemns drugs in the film.

"I think, like everybody else in Ireland over the last 20 years I have been fascinated by the exploits of this man, Martin Cahill," Boorman says. "The book by Paul Williams was full of such fascinating material that I was drawn to it, very, very much so. It is the story of an iconoclast. Cahill invented his own world, his own rules and lived by them. He took on the police, the state and the church and beat them with wit and cunning. But he was also brutal and violent and controlled his gang with a rod of iron. The film exploits this complexity, the uniqueness of the man and the sheer exuberance of his exploits."

Whatever response The General receives from the Cannes jury next month, it should attract an interesting audience when released at 50 Irish cinemas on May 29th. That opening-day audience should contain more than a few cops and robbers.