2011
Vincent D’onofrio, Christopher Walken,
Linda Cardellini.
Director: Jonathan Hensleigh
This was a film I’d never heard of and I happened on quite by accident while clicking around in Amazon’s front menu with no purpose in mind other than finding any reason not to move. It fit the moment. It was a film running 106 minutes and was not a series, demanding an investment of days or weeks. For some reason, probably my appreciation of Christopher Walken, the trailer piqued my interest, and almost unexpectedly I watched the film.
Almost as unexpectedly, I found that viewing this quite unremarkable film had pushed me into reappraisal of the whole American “Gangster” genre of films, and then, by extension, a rather dyspeptic consideration of the U.S.film industry as a whole.
“Kill the Irishman” tells the story of the struggle to control the Cleveland Longshoreman’s union in the early 1970’s. Sounds pretty dry, right? The sort of crap that should be relegated to the “economics” section of the evening news, to be slavered over by some dumpy guy in a cheap suit who was always picked last for games, at school.
The thing is though, this lot take matters at the docks*really* seriously and think nothing of car-bombing people who they don’t agree with.
The film is based on fact and informs us that, during the period of about six months in question, thirty- six car bombs were detonated in Cleveland.
A number that would do Baghdad proud. It does not say how many people were killed, or if it did, I didn’t notice; I was past caring. I found this to be a film about as large a selection of unpleasant people as I have seen in a very long time. Bluntly, the film left me feeling rather ill, with none of the characters possessing so much as a matchbox-full of redeeming qualities. I was reminded of Mark Latham’s book, “The Latham Diaries” description of in-fighting in the Labor Party prior to a Federal election, where one is left with an overwhelming impression of shits fighting their way to the summit of a mountain of shit, for reasons that none of them understand anymore, followed by Latham’s telling description of them as “a conga line of suckholes”.
The film doesn’t really explain the reasoning behind the violence. Even characters who have murdered their way to some sort of success don’t appear to be more materially better off than those who haven’t - or happier hanging around in the same dingy kitchens and bars that they plotted in before they blew up the last person who opposed them.
I saw a dystopian world of shit, without redeeming features. I found myself both alienated, and confused. These people (with the very noticeable exception of Linda Cardellini, for one incredible lambent second of screen time) were truly *ghastly*- busily grubbing around in the muck for money and power and then seeming to gain no pleasure from it. Not for the first time I thought ”This is what you get without an adequate social welfare system. You criminalise the poor, and live in fear of them.”
Example: in Australia we have social welfare and subsidised housing that make it harder for the unemployed poor to starve to death or freeze in the streets; this means that should a poor person be motivated to criminality they are liable to be less desperate to make real assholes of themselves and consequently the society is less violent & unpleasant, and if it amounts to bribing the poor to keep the peace, then what of it? Feeding some prisoner for 20-40 years in jail probably cost just as much, and the crime, whatever it was has already been committed.
While this is all rather a large digression from a review of the film in question, consider my ideas on the welfare state, and then consider a film industry so obsessed with guns that the average film can almost be seen as an infomercial for N.R.A policies, where hangnails are dealt with with firearms and any dispute no matter how minor will probably end in mass murder, then have a high percentage of your films be virtual primers for how gangs of loveable mismatched anti-heroes can steal as much money as possible and maybe even get away with it; and then flood the society with cheap, easily available guns, and *then* make *more* films that wring their (figurative) hands about why people keep shooting each other.
All up, I rather enjoyed “Kill the Irishman”, but doubt very much that I’ll ever watch it again, but I’ll definitely watch out for Linda Cardellini in future.
©Alex Rieneck 2024 All Rights Reserved.
It so happens that we also had the urge to watch a movie, last night, rather than land on another series one, episode one path of commitment.
Your review both inspires me and warns me off watching this flick… But, given it is a contained movie package, and not a risky suck ‘n’ see …