50 DEAD MEN WALKING

Director: Kari Skogland
Cast: Ben Kingsley, Jim Sturgess, Kevin Zegers, Nathalie Press, Rose McGowan
Run Time: 118 minutes
Country: Canada/United Kingdom
Year: 2008
Language: English
Rating: 14A (Violence, coarse language, sexually suggestive scene)

Jim Sturgess (dynamic in last year’s Across the Universe) turns in a star-making performance opposite Ben Kingsley (The Wackness, Elegy) in Fifty Dead Men Walking, a sweeping political thriller that gives a face to what Northern Ireland wryly calls “the Troubles.”

Directed by Kari Skogland with grit, precision and a focus on the human drama, this widescreen story, a Gala Presentation at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival®, highlights the personal toll wrought by the larger civil conflict.

Martin (Sturgess) is a small-time Belfast hustler working in the late eighties. Part of a tight group of mates, he’s more concerned with regular pub attendance and easing his way through British military checkpoints than with the reasons the checkpoints stand there in the first place. As such, he makes a prime target for British intelligence. Recruited by a complex, wily agent (Kingsley), Martin starts feeding information about Irish Republican Army activities to the British. With every success, he intensifies the danger posed to himself and his family. The IRA is shown to be ruthless in its retribution; once an infiltrator has been found out, he becomes a “dead man walking.” With full encouragement from the British military, Martin winds himself into an impossible position. His girlfriend (Nathalie Press) pleads with him to come clean about his covert status, understandably terrified of what such dirty work could mean for their safety. But Martin is already in far deeper than he can manage, and the grip of his relationship with Kingsley’s agent is both hard to shake and secretly comforting.

Inspired by Martin McGartland and Nicholas Davies’s book, Skogland captures the character of Northern Ireland in the eighties with great sensitivity, reflecting both the despair of the situation and the resolve it produced. This is a thriller, and Skogland keeps the momentum racing. But at the heart of this film stand interconnecting relationships. To watch Martin battle over life-and-death matters with his handler is to understand, on a profound level, how this was the most personal of wars. The real Martin McGartland claims that the information he passed to the British saved at least fifty lives. He is still in hiding.

“Sturgess once again confirms his ability to carry a film with a performance that is just as commanding but very different from his most notable roles in Across the Universe and 21.” – Allan Hunter, Screen International

Website/Trailer: www.tvafilms.com