Kill The Irishman - Making Lies Out Of The Truth

Jul

4

Kill The Irishman - Making Lies Out Of The Truth

≡ Category: Action, Drama, Recommended, United States |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: United States
Genre: Action/ Drama
Director: Jonathan Hensleigh
Year: 2008

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE

I’m a bit of an eternal optimist. The director of Kill The Irishman, Jonathan Hensleigh, is best known as the screenwriter of such entertainments as Die Hard With A Vengeance, The Punisher, Armageddon, The Saint, and Jumanji. The only movie out of this list that I admire is Die Hard With A Vengeance, which I found endlessly creative and amusing. I was hopeful that Hensleigh, who also scripted Kill The Irishman, would put his best foot forward on his second feature film as a director.

Well, my optimism was justified, just not in the way I expected.

There are big script problems with Kill The Irishman. It turns out that the film is based on the true story of Danny Greene (Ray Stevenson), who was involved in the rackets in Cleveland, back in the 70s. Danny was foolish or brave enough to go to war with the Mafia over what amounted to peanuts.

Now, that’s great material. There’s plenty of color and incident and because it’s real life, it shouldn’t be predictable. Wrong.

How is that possible? Because Hensleigh has stuffed this real life story with screenplay clichés that telegraph plot points and falsify events that should reek of authenticity.

I’ll give you a couple examples. At a certain point in the movie, Danny and his crew are at war with the Mafia. Folks are being blown up by car bombs at regular intervals. Danny warns his associate John Nardi (Vincent D’Onofrio) to be careful. This is the first time that Danny has shown anything resembling caution. Nardi tells Danny that he worries too much and that they are “going places.” Then Nardi walks to his car. If you don’t know what happens next, it’s probably because you’re from a remote tribe in Papua New Guinea.

At another point, Danny crashes a Hells Angels party and tells everyone to leave. The head honcho tell him something to the effect that he’s going to punch his teeth out and then go across the street and screw his old lady and force him to watch. How many times have you heard that line? And Hensleigh uses it twice, with two different characters!

Every time you start to get into the story, Hensleigh the writer will put words into his character’s mouths that came, not from life, but from other movie scripts. We’re repeatedly reminded that we are watching a movie.

Another mistake Hensleigh makes is to try and make Danny Greene lovable and admirable. He has Greene spout conventional modern wisdom back in the 70s. A tough old Irish broad goes soft on Greene when he pays her back rent and tells him that there’s a bit of good in every Irishman or something like that. Hensleigh is as full of blarney as Greene.

This is doubly a shame because Hensleigh the director does a damned good job, starting with the look of the picture. Instead of the saturated, day glo colors of modern Hollywood, Hensleigh skews towards natural lighting, which blends effortlessly with news footage from the period. Together with conscientious set and costume design, Hensleigh expertly evokes the 70s.

Hensleigh, together with casting directors J.C. Cantu and Mary Vernieu, was smart enough to cast fresh face Ray Stevenson in the lead role and expert characters like Vincent D’Onofrio, Christopher Walken, and Robert Davi in crucial supporting roles.

Hensleigh doesn’t drop the ball on the action aspects, either. The violence is suitably bloody and visceral, just stylized enough to be graceful, but still within the realm of naturalism, which was the right choice for his subject matter.

Finally, as a director, Hensleigh also keeps the picture moving, even when his script pauses to deify his hero.

Basically, Hensleigh the writer sabotages Hensleigh the director.

The result is fairly entertaining bullshit.

On a positive note, if Hensleigh starts directing good scripts by other writers, he could have a great second career as a director ahead of him.