Here is a film that is both highly dramatic and thematically relevant in today's world. The movie achieves a pretty fair share of the potential inherent in the story, but not as much as it could have. It's a story of wrongful conviction of alleged terrorists by a justice system made more than typically corrupt by a fevered witch-hunt atmosphere. The defendants wrongly convicted were mostly Irish, so director Jim Sheridan understandably tells the story with a bit of nationalist fervor.

Historical Background: After his highly successful debut film, My Left Foot (1989), Jim Sheridan turned next to The Field (1990) and then In the Name of the Father (1993). The latter film received seven Oscar nominations, though it won none of the trophies. Sheridan went on to make The Boxer (1998), and In America (2002). Sheridan currently has one film in post-production (Get Rich or Die Tryin'), one in production (Da Vinci's Mother), and has two projects already announced for next year (Emerald City and one untitled).

The Story: The story begins in a Catholic ghetto of Belfast, Ireland in the early seventies. Belfast is teeming with trouble of all sorts. Young Gerry Conlon (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his pal Danny (Anthony Brophy) want nothing to do with either the occupying British soldiers or the Irish Revolutionary Army (IRA), especially because they are in the business of stealing the lead piping off the rooftops to sell on the black market. Waving a pipe around from atop an apartment complex, Gerry looks all the world like a sniper to a patrol of Brits down below. Pretty soon, British soldiers are chasing Gerry and Danny through the narrow streets and down the alleyways. It doesn't help matters when these two Irish hooligans lead the cordon of pursuers through an Irish house in which the IRA has guns stashed. Soon, the entire neighborhood has erupted in a riot and the British have beefed up their usual patrols with armored vehicles and riot squads. A crowd gathers armed with stones and firebombs and faces down the police to a standoff. Meanwhile, Gerry and Danny are hauled before the local IRA gang leader and are threatened with having their kneecaps shot to bits for endangering the local operation. Gerry's father, Giuseppe Conlon (Pete Postlethwaite), arrives just in time to plead with the IRA leader. Gerry is able to walk away intact, but his father realizes that if the kid stays in Belfast, it will be only a matter of time before he's either dead or incapacitated. The family decides to ship Gerry off to the relative tranquility of London.

On the ferryboat, Gerry encounters one of his old classmates, Paul Hill (John Lynch), a handsome longhaired hippie (what we would have called a "freak" in those days) and the two link up for a pint and few bars of Bob Dylan's hit How Does it Feel? . Since they're both near broke and will be hanging out in London, they decide to hook up for a bit. In London, they look up another old Irish pal, Paddy Armstrong (Michael Sheppard), who's living in a hippie commune dubbed "Xanadu," where dope and free-love reign supreme. Except for being broke and listening to explosions in the background, now and then, life is a lark. Gerry also stops by to visit his aunt who lives in London, Annie Mcguire (Britta Smith).

The explosions are the result of IRA terrorist attacks that have spilled over from Ireland to England. One such explosion, at a pub in Guilford, kills five innocent British civilians. The British public is incensed and demands vengeance and action from their government. One result of the fervor is the Prevention of Terrorism Act, passed hastily by parliament, that provides for a suspension of habeas corpus if a person is suspected of terrorism. The police can now hold suspects for seven days without charges. That, in turn, provides plenty of time to torture "confessions" out of detainees.

Gerry and Paul are essentially apolitical and couldn't care less about such matters, so long as they can get high and get laid, in either order. The commune, however, becomes a less hospitable place for the two Irishmen due to the rising tensions. Gerry and Paul decide to find another place to sleep and end up in a quiet park, empty except for another vagrant, Charlie Burke (Joe McPartland), who complains that they've taken his bench. Later that night, Gerry spots a high-priced hooker dropping her purse as she climbs into the fancy car of a high-rolling John. In the purse are the keys to her apartment. Gerry, who's already an experienced burglar, sees a chance to make a fast buck. After rolling around in the hooker's plush bed for a few minutes, he finds her stash of cash. The two lads celebrate with a night in a hotel and some flashy new pimp-like outfits. Gerry also decides to pay a visit to Belfast to impress his family and spread some of his new cash around.

Meanwhile, the police are turning the screws on all their snitches to get a lead on the bombers responsible for the Guilford Pub explosion. One of the spiteful Brits from the commune gives them Gerry's name and Paul's. In Belfast, a squad of British soldiers comes barreling into the Conlon apartment to arrest Gerry. He's hauled back to London and subjected to intense questioning, which gradually escalates into beatings, brutality, and threats against his father's life. After several days of such treatment, Gerry cracks and signs a "confession," hoping that he'll have better luck in court. He doesn't.

By the time he gets to court, he's one of four (the "Guilford Four") accused of being an IRA cell responsible for the Guilford bombing. Another seven ("the Maquire Seven"), including his aunt Annie and her two children are accused of being a support group. Gerry's father, Giuseppe, is also caught in the noose after he comes to England to find out what's happened to his son. The government's case hinges on the "confessions" and doctored forensic reports, which report traces of nitrogen in Annie's apartment that could just as well have come from cigarette smoke residues as from explosives. Nevertheless, all of the defendants are found guilty. The judge expresses his disappointment that they had not been charged with treason, precluding him from sentencing them to hanging. Gerry gets life in prison with a minimum of thirty years to be served.

In prison, Gerry and his father become cellmates (only in this movie version of the story). This gives them plenty of time to work on their troubled father-son relationship. Fifteen years in prison in your twenties and early thirties is bound to bring about some maturation in perspective. An IRA operative named Joe McAndrew (Don Baker) is arrested during this time and confesses to organizing the bombing of the pub in Guilford, but the authorities ignore the new information. In prison, Giuseppe is in bad health but works diligently to campaign for an appeal to overturn the erroneous convictions. An English lawyer, Gareth Peirce (Emma Thompson), takes up their case and subpoenas the police files from the archives. One day, when the regular archivist is out sick for the day, the temporary replacement inadvertently gives Peirce a file with material labeled "Not to be shared with the defense." The file includes a statement from Charlie Burke, the bum in the park, corroborating Gerry and Paul's alibi. It's enough to break the case wide open. It's too late, however, for Giuseppe, who had died in prison after serving five years.

Themes: There are three main themes in this film, but the most important one, by far, is the issue of police and judicial corruption. Although Sheridan lets the theme unfold naturally, it nevertheless comes through powerfully. Every reviewer of this film comments on the heinous corruption by which (1) confessions are elicited by torture and threats; (2) evidence and expert witness testimony is doctored to ensure conviction; and (3) exonerating evidence is suppressed. Every reviewer also comments on how the suspension of habeas corpus and public pressure for action against terrorism increases the risk that injustices will occur. Amnesty International roundly condemned the Prevention of Terrorism Act passed by Parliament, recognizing its potential for abuse. Several other cases from the same time period were later reviewed as a result of the overturning of the conviction of the Guilford Four, so obviously the problem was endemic to the judicial system of the time, and not simply a freak bit of malfeasance of the part of a single overzealous prosecutor.

I think, however, that reviewers in general are failing to grasp the real magnitude of the problem. When a folder containing evidence in a police archive can be openly labeled "Not to be shared with the prosecution," it is an indication that even the pretense of "justice" has been subordinated to the expediency of taking action against terrorism. Ultimately, the prosecutor in the original case who authorized the suppression of evidence and encouraged the doctoring of forensic testimony was never punished (he simply retired). Had he been acting only on his own accord, the British government would surely have prosecuted him to distance itself from the injustice of his actions. That he was not prosecuted indicates clearly that he was acting under higher authority. The British government probably reasoned that the best way to combat IRA attacks on innocent English civilians was to attack innocent Irish civilians. They couldn't do that in the same manner as the IRA without losing the moral high ground that derives from labeling the other side "terrorists." Instead, they turned to the so-called "justice" system to exact revenge. Justice systems in every country are, in the end, implements for the exercise of power.

The second theme of the film is the problem of violence and, especially, that which stems from terrorism. It is interrelated with the first theme. Terrorism, by definition, consists of attacks or threats against noncombatants as a way of creating indirect pressure on the political entities that represent those people. The weaker of two adversaries opts for terrorism because they can't outgun the opponent's military or police units in direct conflict. The stronger adversary pretends to find terrorism morally reprehensible, while engaging in "conventional" warfare or police actions that usually have equally horrendous effects on civilian populations. It is often difficult to combat terrorist units directly, because the terrorists are hidden behind layers of security precautions and diffused among large civilian populations, some of who provide support and safe havens. From a purely strategic point of view (disregarding moral considerations), antiterrorist efforts can benefit from threatening the civilian population within which the terrorists are hidden, so that opposition to the terrorist group will increase and start to constrain its activities. The population in which a terrorist group is embedded has potential for influencing the activities of the terrorists because they are in close contact with them. In my opinion, the British government knew they had convicted innocent people and were content to do so. It's a deplorable strategy, but it worked, to an extent, by making the Irish people more conscious of the pain associated with the suffering of innocent members of their society, just as the British were suffering from the deaths of civilians due to the bombings. Sheridan vividly illustrates how severely the violence was affecting the general population in Ireland in the riot scene near the film's beginning. Ultimately, the IRA campaign of bombings was reigned in as much by pressure exerted by Irish citizens on the organization as any other factor. Attacking innocent people, whether by bombings or judicial terrorism, is never morally justifiable. Those who deplore such choices need to understand that governments often undertake such activities with full awareness of what they are doing.

The same pattern is being repeated, now, in relation to the terrorism being waged by Arab terrorist groups. The tactics being used by the Bush administration to combat terrorism developed from study of past efforts, such as the British way of dealing with the IRA. Bin Laden has evaded justice largely because he is embedded somewhere in the Arab world, possibly in Iran, among some group that covertly supports his efforts. Bush's attack on Iraq was by way of saying to the Arab world, if you're going to attack our civilian population, be apprised that we can attack yours. Smart bombs dropped on residential sectors of Bagdad had a dramatic effect, even for a population that had already experienced half a million civilian deaths from American-imposed economic sanctions. Though Iraq had no apparent relationship to 9/11, the country provided a target of convenience for establishing the idea of vulnerability among the constituencies within which the Arab terrorists operate. The idea of "democratizing" Iraq was introduced to placate the American public, or at least that portion that requires the appearance of noble purpose. Added to the chunk of the public with a thirst for vengeance – any random vengeance would do – and Bush had his tenuous majority support. From a strategic perspective, the main risk from fighting terrorism in this way is that such actions may increase support for terrorism more than opposition. From a moral viewpoint, it's a foul approach altogether. On the home front, Bush pushed through the Patriot Act, which is reminiscent of the Terrorism Prevention Act passed by Parliament that set the stage for the false conviction of the Conlons.

A third theme in this film relates to a father and son reaching a better appreciation of one another through adversity. Five years of shared suffering can have that effect. Gerry came to respect his father's quiet strength and finally joined in his crusade for justice. Sheridan states in an interview that he "wanted to tell the father's story most of all." He added, "In a way, I didn't really want to do the story of all the injustice. I knew the central father-son story could be universal." I think that Sheridan misjudged what was most important about the story of the Conlons. Stories about fathers and sons coming to grips with their relationship, as the son matures into adulthood, may be universal, but this one is also rather ordinary. What makes the Conlon's story important is the tale of injustice. Sheridan's determination to emphasize the father-son relationship is what makes the middle segment of this film drag on interminably.

Production Values: The script for this film was based on the memoirs of Gerry Conlon, called Proved Innocent, which described his relationship with his father while in prison. The film's producer Gabriel Byrne acquired the memoirs. Irishman Terry George then wrote the screenplay. The script nicely depicts the tense life in the Belfast of the seventies and the ambivalence of ordinary Irish citizens as well as the hysteria in London after the string of bombings in the early seventies.

There are several problems with the script. One is that it tries to do too much. It begins as an adventure film, shifts to a courtroom drama, then briefly becomes a family drama, and then returns once again to a courtroom setting. The middle prison segment sags badly and is just too drawn out. Sheridan would have done well to trim the film by a half-hour or so. The middle segment is also the portion with the least basis in fact. The father and son never roomed in the same cell and sometimes weren't even in the same prison. The character Joe McAndrew, who plays a pivotal role in the film in pushing Gerry toward his father's point of view, didn't actually exist.

Sheridan takes many other liberties with the details of the actual story as well. The brutal police interrogator was a "composite" of several individuals. The Guilford Four and the Maguire Seven were actually tried separately. Gerry and Paul spent the night of the bombing in a men's shelter, not on a park bench. The defense lawyer, Gareth Peirce, was an investigative solicitor, not a barrister. The courtroom dramatics never occurred in the manner depicted. Although none of these alterations, designed to streamline and compress for dramatic purposes, alter the issue of wrongful conviction, the modifications nevertheless weaken the film's message because that message has to do expressly with the government playing fast and loose with the truth for expediency. When Sheridan also plays fast and loose with the truth for the expediency of dramatic storytelling, it undercuts the very argument that the film makes. I prefer that a film's style match its message. Something closer to documentary accuracy could have been achieved without adding to the film's length by abbreviating the rather unexceptional story of the father-son catharsis in prison.

Another weakness of the script is that Emma Thompson is badly underused in the role of Gareth Peirce. She has to carry the film's final dramatic scene, but we've never been given much opportunity to develop an attachment to her or an understanding of what drives her. Expanding her role would have also improved the even-handedness of the film, since virtually all of the other English characters are corrupt.

The cinematography effectively captures the look and feel of the seventies. The mob scene in Belfast (actually shot in Dublin) is very well filmed, putting viewers right in the middle of the action. There're lots of close-ups of Gerry and Giuseppe that help us get into their emotions. The film's pace is maintained pretty well with lots of quick cuts. There's a very effective scene in which the prisoners drop flaming sheets of paper from their prison windows as "tears of fire" when word comes that Giuseppe has died. The soundtrack features rock songs from the seventies, including American performers like Bono, Dylan, and Hendrix and Irish performers U2 and Sinead O'Connor. There's also some original soundtrack music by composer Trevor Jones that is mostly brooding and pensive.

Daniel Day-Lewis is outstanding as Gerry Conlon. His character goes through several stages of change, from drugged out carefree youth, to prisoner in despair, to dedicated battler for justice. Day-Lewis never ceases to amaze with both the quality and the variety of his performances. He's appeared elsewhere in such films as My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), A Room with a View (1985), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), My Left Foot (1989), The Last of the Mohicans (1992), The Age of Innocence (1993), The Crucible (1996), and Gangs of New York (2002). Pete Postlethwaite, in his role as the father, Giuseppe Conlon, is every bit as good as Day-Lewis. He's appeared in Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), The Usual Suspects (1995), William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (1996), Brassed Off! (1996), The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Amistad (1997), and The Shipping News (2001). Emma Thompson is outstanding, as she always is, playing the part of Gareth Peirce. Her other work has included parts in Howards End (1992), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Carrington (1995), Sense and Sensibility (1995), Primary Colors (1998), and Love Actually (2003).

Bottom-Line: This is one of those films where you can either focus on what it does well or bemoan the fact that it could have been so much better. The story on which the film was based is so intrinsically powerful that Sheridan couldn't go too terribly wrong, but it sometimes seems like he tried. Despite the problems with the script, I recommend this film, especially in this day and age of the Patriot Act in America and the excesses of the war against terrorism. There's a lot that Americans could learn from this film, but probably won't.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age