Titanic Town

"Titanic Town" is a journeyman drama with a low budget feel which revisits Belfast, NI (circa 1970's) when the IRA and Brits waged war in the streets. The film tells of a housewife and mother who gets fed up with the violence and takes the initiative waging her own war of peace through mediation. Open ended and relatively uneventful, this film has little to offer save the curious and sometimes humorous juxtaposition of a "mom" amongst considerably more sagacious combatants. Not a bad small screen watch for moms but pretty trite stuff by cinematic standards.

There's nothing wrong with action blockbusters.

But too many ppl watching an indy historical docudrama based on a specific time in history, based on real people, based on events that actuallly occurred, complaining essentially what is wrong with the movie is: it's not Hollywood.

It's historical.

It's a docudrama.

It's based on real people.

It's based on real events.

If you want an action movie, don't complain that a historical docudrama isn't.

This is a powerful window into a reality that could all too easily happen to anyone. Armed soldiers having actual shootouts on manicured lawns in suburbia - during daytime hours while kids are walking to and from school, playing on the playgrounds, etc. Your own government freely searching the homes of you and all your neightbors solely because the IRA was fighting them in the streets in your neighborhood. No judge. No search warrant. Hauling ppl off to interrogation based on nothing more than the fact they lived in an area the IRA was shooting up.

Basically, the equivalent of trying to live your life in the middle of No Man's Land during WWI.

Ppl who find this to be boring, to lack drama, to lack intrigue, have obviously spent too much time on fiction, not enough thinking about if it was their father hauled away. If it was their brother who received a head injury by an angry mob. The movie isn't really an 8, but raising my score a little to offset the complaints that it's not something it never claimed to be.

Not marking this as spoilers. It's historical events. You should have a rough idea of the basic overarching events already. If you don't know which side eventually got their way, go read a book.

Oh dear not yet another black comedy featuring the troubles in Northern Ireland . Haven't we seen enough of these type of stories on television ? Do we also have to endure them turning up at film festivals and cinema chains ?

Sorry if I've got a serious problem with this type of story but it's a medium best suited for television written by someone of the calibre of Graham Reid ( Check out the author's BILLY trilogy from the 1980s ) and the problem with TITANIC TOWN is that the script is far too obvious . A mother in a republican estate of Belfast in the 1970s decides she's had enough of the violence and stands up for the peaceful majority . It's the type of story that's supposed to have the audience angry one moment , weeping the next and smiling a moment later . Unfortunately what we get is cyphers giving speeches followed by silly things then back to the speeches again . It's always the innocent who suffer from political violence , thanks for pointing that out because I didn't know . YAWN

I saw this at the 1998 Montreal Film Festival and found it a moving and challenging film on the complexities of personal and political response to a longstanding and divisive issue. Well acted and cinematographed, this film added a dimension that has been rarely touched upon in other depictions of the "troubles in Northern Ireland." It compliments "Every Mother's Son" and "In the Name of the Father" with a moving story of the long-lasting and indiscriminate effects of violence and an attempt to question its limits as a political strategy. This is not a simplistic film, and its power comes from the depth of its critique of all the players in this ongoing political struggle.

A distinctly average film. Yet again, filmmakers try to encapsulate life in NI in the Troubles. Every such film either portrays Protestants as ignorant oppressors or Catholics as ruthless terrorists. The fact is that bad things were committed on all sides. Yes, Catholics were oppressed. Yes, the British Army killed innocents. Yes, the IRA bombed pubs.

The perspective of all sides is rarely taken into account. If you want to learn about the Troubles and the mindset behind them, I suggest three films. 1) In the Name of the Father (A Jim Sheridan film with Daniel Day Lewis) 2) Omagh (An Irish film with Gerard McSorley covering the Real IRA's killing of innocent people in Omagh) 3) Bloody Sunday (A film made by the same people as Omagh, detailing the killing of peaceful protesters by British paratroopers in the 1970s).

For me (as a southern Irish person (ie someone with enough distance to be dispassionate about the Troubles and close enough to understand)), these are by far the best films on the topic.