The General

This is a playful, somewhat fictionalized account of the life and times of Irish gang-boss Martin Cahill, and a fine return to form for writer-director John Boorman. Cahill, nicknamed "The General" by the press and his fellow Dubliners, became one of Ireland's most notorious criminals of the 1980s, thanks to a string of audacious robberies that netted him a reported $60 million, and ultimately bought him a bullet from an IRA gunman. Boorman begins with Cahill's violent end and then, through a brilliant use of reverse motion photography, flashes back to scenes of Martin as a boy (Eamonn Owens), coming of age and learning his criminal trade amid the squalor of post-W...