MICHAEL COLLINS (63)

Directed by: Neil Jordan

Starring: Liam Neeson, Aidan Quinn, Julia Roberts, Alan Rickman

The Pitch: The story of Michael Collins, the driving force behind Ireland's struggle for independence from Britain circa 1920.

Theo Sez: A hagiography that's also a rowdy, meat-and-potatoes adventure story. Jordan's intention seems to be to use the old-fashioned Hollywood historical - complete with such musty devices as the character who writes a letter "out loud", speaking each word as he scribbles it - as a stalking-horse for a highly biased and inflammatory portrait of a controversial figure. Whatever the real Michael Collins was like, this one is a determinedly honest and pleasant-humoured man of the people, his kind heart and good intentions never in any doubt: even when, in the film's most (and only) chilling moment, he sets in motion the terrorist tactics that still plague Ireland today, it's followed a few scenes later by a conscience-stricken speech of atonement ("I hate myself for bringing hate"). Ranged against him, on the other hand, are the brutish British ("That's the thing about the Irish," observes icy-eyed Charles Dance as he polishes off a torture victim: "Sing at the drop of a hat, but never talk when you want them to") and a bunch of Macchiavellian schemers led by Rickman as Eamon de Valera - and it's surely ingenuous of the film to pretend it's comparing the two men's politics when both direction and performance paint Collins's opponent as an unscrupulous megalomaniac. In fact, its political dimension is concerned less with historical accuracy than with the here-and-now - anyone aware of Ireland's current realities can appreciate that de Valera and his nationalists, fighting for a united Ireland, are the antecedents of the IRA, and that the film's sanctification of Collins (who actually says that "We must learn to build with what we've got") amounts to a repudiation of Republican nationalism. However, it's unnecessary to see this as a political movie in the first place: indeed, its main virtue is that one can simply think of it as a solid entertainment, and enjoy the pleasures - not least the big-budget pleasures of technical excellence and period recreation - that follow in the wake of a fine film-maker deeply committed to a large-scale project.