A Belfast Story

Woeful..tripe...horrible acting and script... shocking. Much like the troubles it's self no one walks away from this with a clean conscience.

I must admit I was skeptical about this one at first but I thought I'd at least give a local film a chance. Let me say this; I was pretty surprised.

Going in expecting some sort of troubles rehash the first few scenes immediately set the film in a more gritty reality. With a nice balance between familiar scenery and bloody murders the film flows better than I'd have thought and haunting music gave the whole piece additional atmosphere.

Colm Meaney certainly pulled his weight as an aging detective alongside a cast which seemed to be entirely Irish (which was nice, none of those awful fake accents American films are always using). The only non-local I noticed was Malcolm Sinclair and he was almost as good as Colm so it's easy to overlook. Over all the acting pleasantly surprised me, proving our performing heritage once more.

The concept is definitely daring and certain areas might struggle a little now and then from the sheer weight but having seen it for myself I'm surprised by the bad press it's gotten, especially for a local film. I know I myself will recommend it, a good film that is also locally made and acted deserves all the support it gets

Well, that's 2 hours of my life I'll never get back.

I had high hopes for this, despite the furore around the press pack I was keen to see this movie and see how they would handle a (sort of) non troubles related movie. Well, the answer is they couldn't have got it more wrong. The acting was poor for the most part, Colm tries but you can't carry a movie with just one guy; the dialogue made me cringe more than once, cheesy and unrealistic (I live in Belfast but even allowing for a wider audience -come on!) and the characterisation and motivations were barely plausible at best. I still don't know what message they were leaving the audience with and I think that's what bothers me most

If I could, I would have rated this 0 out of 10 but apparently that's not allowed.

There is no redeeming quality to this film whatsoever. Atrocious writing, directing and acting. A director who clearly has never watched a film in his entire life. All the positive reviews are obviously fake it's the only possible explanation. It's no surprise this director wasn't allowed to make another feature after this one. I'm embarrassed for Meany.

Pretty much the worst NI film that has ever been made, and I sat through A prayer for the dying. This is much worse. I kept waiting for balance, but apparently only one side was responsible for killing in Northern Ireland during the troubles (news to me) which is why they are soo troubled by their consciences, even unto public apologies. No mention of the innocent victims of the security forces, whether in uniform or out, let alone the mass murder of innocents carried out by so-called "loyalist" gangs. No, it's much simpler than that, the IRA were the bad guys plain and simple. And the RUC? Well they were the good guys of course...honest hard- working arbiters wedged between the IRA and innocent civilians.. The British seem to have been airbrushed completely out of Troubles history...well OK, that little adaptation of history is the starting point and it still manages to go downhill after that. And what exactly is "the Northern Ireland Police Service"? Last time I checked it was "The Police Service of Northern Ireland" - although this departure from any reality is quite consistent with the events portrayed, the acting, the dialogue (OMG awful), the characters, the plot and just about everything else. WTF was the fish and chips scene about? What was all that tripe the 'Chief Constable' was banging on about. And the funeral scene? just what the hell was going on there? Swerve this one as hard as you can. If you're interested in 'Troubles' movies, watch 'In the name of the father', or the excellent 'Bloody Sunday' And keep an eye out for the longest overdue film in history, 'Britain's state sponsored mass murder in N. Ireland', but don't hold your breath waiting for it if this is the kind of thing that gets a green light these days.