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'Nothing Personal' treads mean streets of N. Ireland
May 1, 1997
Web posted at: 2:38 p.m. EDT (1838 GMT)From Reviewer Paul Tatara
(CNN) -- The seemingly never-ending battles between radical factions of the Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland have served as the jumping-off point for a number of memorable films in recent years. "In the Name of the Father" has an intense street fighting scene, but it eventually transforms itself into a story about the bond between an estranged father and his son. And "The Crying Game," which begins with a powerfully rendered IRA kidnapping, turns out to be something altogether different once that nice lady takes off her mini-skirt and turns out to be something altogether different.
Thadeus O'Sullivan's "Nothing Personal" sticks more to the topic at hand. The down-and-dirty jobs of the men who perform the kidnappings, knee-cappings, and other assorted barbarisms unique to the Irish "troubles" are what this story is about, and that's the simultaneous strength and weakness of the movie as a whole. In a way, this is a sort of Irish/Protestant take on Martin Scorsese's 1973 Mafia film, "Mean Streets." As in that film, a somewhat more sophisticated foot soldier (James Frain) covers for his violent, dim-bulb buddy (Ian Hart) while the chain of command looks on disapprovingly.
Hart is known to American audiences for his performance as the young John Lennon in "Backbeat." In fact, until now I've never seen Hart play a role except that of John Lennon. He first made a splash in a beautifully realized hour-long film called "The Hours and the Times," a fictional rendering of a sexually charged 1963 weekend holiday taken by Lennon and The Beatles' closeted homosexual manager, Brian Epstein. Anyone who is going to play "the cynical Beatle" had better have a way with a cruel put-down, and Hart certainly does.
In "Nothing Personal" he plays Ginger, a sadistic little jerk who's too dumb to fight with mere words. He relies, to a sometimes nauseating degree, on the power of guns and switchblades. Again, the "Mean Streets" connection is obvious, with Ginger being a more overtly lethal variation on Robert DeNiro's Johnny Boy character. One of the first scenes in the film finds Ginger waiting for, then chasing down, a Catholic man who has exited a pub. Ginger cares not a whit whether the people he kills are involved in acts of terrorism. Any Catholic will do. He shoots the man in the back, then whips out a knife and performs a (mercifully unspecified) mutilation.
Hart's Ginger is not quite the charismatic live-wire he needs to be in order to make the story completely successful. James Frain's Kenny, though often just as violently explosive as Ginger, seems far too intelligent to continue being seen in public with this self-righteous monster. Their non-violent scenes together are meant to establish an emotional bond that would explain Kenny's loyalty, but far too much of their screen time is spent screaming and poking at each other. You have to do some pretty precise tap dancing to make these kinds of characters appear as both cold-blooded murderers and sentimental pub buddies, and O'Sullivan doesn't seem to be up to the challenge all of the time.
That isn't to say that he's not a solid director. The performances are uniformly fine (Frain is especially strong), but O'Sullivan has trouble with the momentum of the story. Actually, a lot of the problem can probably be traced to the subject matter. Sudden bursts of violence are best used to punctuate stories. That doesn't work here because, to a large degree, these guys are sudden bursts of violence waiting to happen. We don't get enough insight into the rift between the battling factions. I have an Irish friend who says that most people in Northern Ireland don't have a clear conception of exactly why everyone is shooting and bombing each other to kingdom come. They just do it because it's always been done. This is the case with most ongoing feuds, but, true or not, it doesn't make for particularly riveting storytelling.
The script is rather so-so, seeming more like a series of nicely drawn character sketches than anything else. You can't help but get a little overripe when dealing with such operatic emotions, but the final 10 or 15 minutes of the film are absurdly melodramatic. I won't reveal what happens, but it isn't too hard to spot the character that will end up being a sacrificial lamb in the final reel. Still, considering the alternatives, you could do a lot worse than "Nothing Personal" -- and I mean a lot. Remember, the summer movie season is just around the corner, and Batman doesn't pause from the roar-crash-boom to debate politics. I sure wouldn't mind seeing him take one in the kneecap, though.
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