LIAM NEESON is superb and convincing in his portrayal of Collins. In the film, his rather obnoxious fraternal animal vigour is made attractive in a way which surprised me.
But only parts of Collins's personality are conveyed. We are shown the boy scout who improvised brilliantly - the wrestling, bullying, vital Collins. We do not see his capacity for deviousness his immersion in conspiracy, the fact that he was president of the supreme council of the IRB, a secret network which controlled many front organisations. In the film he is depicted as Minister for Intelligence, whereas he was actually Minister for Finance.
No one else in the film matches Neeson's acting, although Stephen Rea is sinister and unsettling as Broy. The real Ned Broy incidentally, lived on to found Dev's version of the Special Branch in the 1930s, called the Broy Harriers. As for Julia Roberts's portrayal of Kitty Kiernan the less said the better. It is deeply embarrassing.
Dev appears to be a self-obsessed half-head with a cunning streak. His ideas are portrayed as being plain stupid, like blowing up the Custom House and allowing the cabinet members to be arrested. I'm not aware that he was primarily responsible for these decisions. It really is an offensive and unbalanced treatment of Dev.
While Collins appears to be a credible, rounded character, Dev comes across as an absurd cartoon figure of fun. But Dev could not have achieved what he did if he had really been such an eejit.
The crowd scenes, the street battles and ambushes are all excellently done. We get a keen sense of the squalor of Dublin; the constant menace of being run over by a tram and the dangers of cycling on a wet day.
The film is essentially a melodrama built on cliche. It is a comfortable film to watch because it makes no demands on the viewer. Dev's motive for trying to undermine Collins is shown to be personal jealousy of Collins's heroic status. This is a crass simplification, as is the implication that Harry Boland's republicanism is purely attributable to his rejection by Kitty.
These things cannot be attributed solely to personal pique. The genuine debate over what was politically the best option is ignored. The records of the Dail debates show that, far from saying only a few words from the heart, Collins was actually a sophisticated and articulate speaker.
Any film based on historical events will simplify the sequence of events and the explanation for them. This film is no exception. It is irritating, however, to see the South Longford election dated May 1918, when it actually happened in May 1917.
There is no evidence that Collins met Kitty when she was tending to his wounds. He was actually staying in the hotel which was run by Kitty's family and had a rollicking good time with all the Kiernan sisters. And although the film shows Collins to be a man handy with a gun, he was actually not experienced in direct combat. Florrie O'Donoghue, adjutant of the Cork Number One Brigade of the IRA, said that if Collins had seen action he never would have stood up during the ambush at Beal na mBlath.
The film gives the impression that the War of Independence was virtually restricted to Dublin and was about shooting government agents during a relatively short period. In fact it was a multi-faceted revolution, in which Dev's propaganda campaign was, in my view, more important than the armed campaign.
The flying columns - small bands of men, moving from house to house - were not an idea of Collins's in 1918. They sprang up as a pragmatic way of avoiding arrest. It was not adopted as an official policy until 1920. And the film does not include Richard Mulcahy, who was much more important in organising military operations than Collins. Collins was more of a fixer, the centre of conspiracies.
The film misrepresents history in that it suggests that the Easter Rising was an inevitable consequence of 700 years of British rule. The Easter Rising was an aberrant expression of frustration by a marginalised group. The rebels are seen leaving the GPO, vulnerable and exhausted, surrendering to the British forces. But there is little indication of the violence caused by the rebels which led to the shelling of the GPO in the first place.
We see honest, scrupulous uncertainty among the rebels, but not among their opponents. I think there was a lot of psychological torment and uncertainty among the British. Relations between the two countries were improving when suddenly the Rising occurred.
It is no wonder that 1916 led to an escalation of British violence in Ireland. But in the film Collins blames the British for making him hate them: "I hate them for making hate necessary." In my view, both sides must share the blame for the terror and misery to which Michael Collins contributed with such flair and style.
This film is neither good nor unbiased history but nobody is likely to be inspired by watching it to burn down a building or shoot a policeman. It will bring harmless enjoyment to all with an appetite for period melodrama.