Frankie is a pure product of the Troubles: As
an eight-year-old, he saw his father murdered by
masked gunmen and, as a young man, he's a remorseless
soldier in the Irish Republican Army. He
and his mates cook up a wild scheme to buy Stinger
missiles to combat the military helicopters the
British Army uses to hunt them down, and Frankie
is whisked off to the U.S. to get them by a
network of IRA supporters. He's given a sackful
of money, a new name—Rory Devaney—and a
room in the home of Irish-American cop Tom O'Meara
(Harrison Ford), who has no IRA ties and
no clue that Rory is anything but a fresh-faced
immigrant looking to make a new start in America.
Frankie sets about his business with ruthless
efficiency, making contact with Megan Doherty
(Natascha McElhone), his link to home and potential
love interest; old buddy Sean (Paul Ronan),
who's got the boat they'll use to take the missiles
back; and sleek arms-dealer Billy Burke (Treat
Williams). But things get complicated, particularly
as Frankie and Tom develop a friendship that can
only end in betrayal.
It would be nice to be able to like The Devil's
Own better, since it's exactly the kind of movie you
think you wish you were watching as you're being
pummeled into submission by some high-decibel,
feature-length video game like The Rock or Eraser.
The Devil's Own contains its fair share of action,
but reverts to the old-fashioned notion that
car chases and gun fights aren't the be-all and end-all of
moviemaking: The character-driven interludes,
which most contemporary movies have pared down
to fleeting, broad-stroke breathing spaces between
explosions, take center stage here. Pitt's
performance would be impressive even without
the note-perfect Belfast accent, and Ford brings a
tense vulnerability to O'Meara, a fundamentally
decent man stuck in a no-win moral bind.
It's pointless to speculate about the particulars
of its troubled production history, marked by
extensive rewrites (many more writers worked
on The Devil's Own than the credits reflect), clashes
between young gun Pitt and old-guard star Ford,
and 11th-hour reshoots. But the result is a film that
feels as though bits and pieces are missing,
as though it ought to be morally complex and richly
characterized, but isn't. The elements seem to
be in place: O'Meara's ambivalence about his job
(loves the serve-and-protect part, hates the
us-against-them mentality); Frankie's innate decency,
undermined by his war-tempered fatalism; the
spectrum of Irish-Americans, from police chief to beat
cop to lace-curtain judge with IRA ties to glad-handing
saloon-owner and part-time gunrunner. Shot
by Gordon Willis (The Godfather) in the muted
blues and browns of gritty, urban pictures of the
'70s, The Devil's Own looks lean and tough.
But bets are hedged: The bloody chaos that follows
Frankie stops short at Tom's door and the faint
echo of "There's no such thing as a bad boy"
platitudes haunts the depiction of this golden-haired
avenging angel. It's not an American story.
-Payback Time-
I think Pitt's performance is going to be unjustly
criticized simply because an American actor doing
any accent is always an easy target. But Frankie
McGuire is his best role to date, and he counteracts
with his most robust acting -- it's right up
there with his plum turn in 1995's Seven. Ford, as always,
is great; he and Pitt generate sparks when they
clash, especially in the movie's climactic sequence
which takes place on a barge. One of the final
lines in The Devil's Own, "This isn't an American
story, it's an Irish one," might be a lie due
to the Hollywoodized slickness, but it's also a haunting
send-off to a powerful film.
Harrison
Ford -
Tom O'Meara
Brad Pitt -
Rory Devaney
Francis Frankie McGuire
With
Margaret Colin,
Ruben Blades, Treat Williams,
George Hearn,Mitchell
Ryan, Natascha McElhone,
Paul Ronan, Simon Jones, Julia Stiles, Ashley Carin,
Kelly Singer.
"This isn't an American
story,
it's an Irish one,"