NEIL Jordan's Michael Collins begins at the end, in the summer of 1922 after Collins was ambushed and killed at Beal na mBlath in west Cork, as his girlfriend Kitty Kiernan and his staunch ally Joe O'Reilly try to come to terms with his death. "Some people are what their times demand," O'Reilly observes. That opening scene is preceded by a short roll of text describing Britain as the "foremost world power" at the time and Ireland as Britain's "most troublesome colony".
Turning to the subject of Michael Collins, the text states: "His life and death defined the period in its triumph terror and tragedy. This is his story.
Shaped as one extended flashback which follows that poignant meeting between Kitty Kiernan and Joe O'Reilly, Jordan's film takes up the story of Michael Collins in 1916, when he was 25. The action cuts to the GPO and the Rising, in the first of several sequences to make bountiful use of Anthony Pratt's meticulously constructed recreation of O'Connell Street on a vast Grangegorman set.
Suddenly, we are witnessing our country's history bursting vibrantly and vividly into life before our eyes. "The game's over, Harry, we lost again," are the first words spoken by Collins as he and his close friend, Harry Boland, surrender. They are lined up with other participants in the Rising as a Dublin Castle detective singles out the ringleaders - Pearse, McDonagh, Clarke James Connolly on a stretcher ... and in the next scene they are executed one after another.
"What happens next time?" Boland asks Collins. "We won't play by their rules, Harry," is his reply. "We'll invent our own.
Cut to 1918 when they are released from prison and Collins, already established as a forceful speaker at public rallies, elaborates on his plans: "We'll be an invisible army. Our uniform will be the dress of the man in the street." Quoting Peter Pan, Collins expresses the belief that everything is possible if you wish it.
As Collins sets his campaign of guerrilla warfare in motion, we see him recruit a dozen young, single, working class men, his "12 Apostles" to carry out his crackdown on "informers and collaborators". "You're good at bloody mayhem," Boland tells Collins in a reference which echoes Collins's comment, during a sitting of the illegal Irish government, that he is "minister for gun running, daylight robbery and general mayhem".
Meanwhile, Eamon de Valera is shown serving Mass in and plotting his escape from Lincoln Jail. In one of the movie's occasional bursts of humour, the escaping Dev is given a fur coat to wear "Pretend you're a whore," he is told, to which he replies: "All I'm missing is the high heels".
In one of the film's several outstanding sequences which so effectively cut back and forwards between dramatically charged action and quieter interludes, Jordan cross cuts between a tender moment between Collins and Kitty Kiernan in the Gresham Hotel, and the 12 Apostles, young assassins on bicycles, as they seek out their victims and gun them down with varying degrees of nervousness and confidence.
The retaliation that follows is swift and shocking and provides the film with one of its most powerful sequences, the Bloody Sunday massacre in Croke Park. Men and boys watch from the stands as Tipperary leads Dublin on the scoreboard and then the cheerful atmosphere is shattered as bizarre looking tanks, resembling some primitive concepts for a robot, invade the pitch. A footballer, puzzled, nonchalantly lobs the ball over one of the tanks. He is mown down and the massacre begins.
When Dev is free and back at the cabinet, the tensions between him and Collins mount. Dev advises the cabinet that there is a slim possibility that the British might want to talk. "If we are to negotiate as a legitimate government," he says, "our armed forces must act like a legitimate army". He proposes "large scale engagements", to which Collins responds: "You mean like in 1916. The great heroic ethic of failure. All marching in step towards slaughter. We might as well save them the bother and blow our brains out." This is not what we were taught at school.
As the Downing Street negotiations loom, Dev appoints Collins to lead their team. "I'm no good at talk," Collins protests. "I'm just a yob from west Cork." Rather than depicting the talks, the film cuts to the aftermath of the Treaty and the subsequent divisions. "It's the best anyone could have got," Collins says, but Harry Boland retorts: "It gives them the North. It divides the country."
THE Civil War is shown as a montage of explosions and attacks as bitterness mounts on all sides. When de Valera arranges the fatal rendezvous with Collins in west Cork, Joe O'Reilly warns Collins that he would be crazy to go. While Sinead O'Connor sings He Moved Through the Fair on the soundtrack, the camera swoops high above the "bandit country" for an ominous overhead shot and the ambushers get into position as Collins is driven to his assignation through Beal na mBlath. This sequence cross cuts with a quiet section in which Kitty Kiernan enthusiastically shops for a wedding dress in Clerys.
A smiling youth, who has served as de Valera's emissary to Collins on the previous night, is the one who is shown to fire the bullet that hits Michael Collins in the head and kills him. The film ends on newsreel footage of his funeral, which was attended by over half a million people, and a final message declares: "He died, paradoxically, in an attempt to finally remove the gun from Irish politics."