Reviewed by Anne Wollenberg
Stars Ben Kingsley, Jim Sturgess, Kevin Zegers, Natalie Press,
Rose McGowan, Tom Collins, William Houston, Laura Hughes,
Michael McElhatton, Gerard Jordan, David Pearse
Written by Kari Skogland
Certification UK 15 | Ireland 15A
Runtime 117 minutes
Directed by Kari Skogland
It’s a risky business, turning Queen’s Evidence. You could get away with it. You could end up dead and/or reviled by all: “I don’t blame the IRA for killing him, I blame my son for the choices that he made,” the father of one dead snitch proclaims at his funeral. Or, like Martin McGartland, you could end up spending your life on the run, changing your name once a month and still being peppered with bullets once in a while – like the time in 1999 when an IRA hitman tracked him down in Whitley Bay and shot him six times.
It’s the 1980s and Martin (Sturgess) is a young Catholic living in West Belfast, where IRA punishment squads rule the estates. He becomes involved with the IRA after an operative offers him a job driving, and rises through the ranks. But he’s also working for the British police, feeding names and information to a man calling himself Fergus (Kingsley), who pushes Martin to feed him more and more information. As well as trying to maintain a double life as IRA member and informer, he also has to try and keep his activities secret from girlfriend Lara (Press).
Kingsley may be the biggest name on the movie poster, but Sturgess is absolutely the star of this film, putting in a near-faultless performance. He’s got the Irish accent down pat, unlike Rose McGowan – her appearance around halfway through as IRA super-chick Grace is out of keeping with the rest of the movie, and her laughably poor attempts at emulating an Irish accent don’t help. McGartland has apparently raised objections about the film, which was inspired by the book he co-wrote with Nicholas Davies, saying it misrepresents his motives and that he did not in fact hesitate about working for Special Branch – or join the IRA before he started to do so. It is perhaps ironic that he’s concerned with his public image given how low a profile he needs to keep, though his general feelings about the project can’t have been helped by comments from some of the key cast members. Rose McGowan announced that she would have joined the IRA if she’d lived in Belfast during the Troubles, telling a news conference: “My heart just broke for the cause.” It’s... well, it’s a bit tactless, isn’t it? And then Jim Sturgess, who plays Martin, told Empire magazine that the former IRA members who chaperoned him while filming were “some of the nicest people I’ve ever met... Some of them were genuinely nice, passionate people.”
Watch Fifty Dead Men walking and you’re likely to disagree. It’s not Donnie Brasco, and it’s perhaps not the best Troubles-themed movie around, but it’s well-directed, well-paced and a compelling portrait of a young man who matures in brutal fashion – from cocky wheeler-dealer to conflicted IRA member, informant and father. McGartland may have criticised the film, but if his family see it and recognise him (and you’ve got to wonder if they’ve already figured out he’s alive, given he’s published a book) then they ought to feel proud.