When the Sky Falls
Ireland/USA 1999
Reviewed by Kevin Maher
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Dublin, the present. Journalist Sinead Hamilton interviews crime boss Martin Shaughnessy. Soon after Shaughnessy is murdered. Hamilton discovers that the IRA was involved in the killing. At police headquarters, Detective Sergeant Mackey learns that another crime lord, Dave Hackett, has been released from prison. Hamilton investigates Dublin's growing drug-abuse problems; against her husband's wishes, she takes their only son to an anti-pusher march.
After a fruitless raid on a nightclub owned by Dave Hackett, Sergeant Mackey decides to plant some heroin there, but his plan is foiled by one of Hackett's henchmen, Tattoo. Hamilton writes an exposé on an infamous Dublin bank robber and is shot in the leg in retribution. Tattoo is beaten up by members of the IRA. Hamilton meets with the IRA who denounce drug-related crimes and inform her that Dave Hackett is behind them all. She vows to expose Hackett, but he attacks her outside his house. Sergeant Mackey warns Hamilton that she's in danger from Hackett. On her way home from a court appearance, Hamilton is shot dead in her car.
Review
Following Ordinary Decent Criminal, The General and Crush Proof, When the Sky Falls is the latest in a string of films set in Ireland that reject traditional representations of pre-modern bucolic whimsy in favour of gritty portraits of Dublin's criminal underworld. What immediately separates When the Sky Falls from these other Irish gangster movies, however, is the conspicuous extent to which it borrows from Hollywood. Here director John MacKenzie (The Long Good Friday, 1979) and his three scriptwriters have fused a plethora of US crime-movie conventions on to their skeletal tale. (Charting the crusade one fearless journalist wages against Dublin gangsters, When the Sky Falls is based on the life of crime correspondent Veronica Guerin who, before her murder, collaborated with writer Michael Sheridan on early drafts of the screenplay.) Hence, after a failed club raid, MacKenzie stages an impressive but superfluous car chase through deserted housing estates. Elsewhere gang boss Dave Hackett reclines in a Jacuzzi, drinking champagne, a corrupt mechanic is interrogated while working underneath his car, and Hamilton interviews crime lord Shaughnessy above a twinkling panorama of Dublin at night that brings to mind LA as seen from Mulholland Drive.
But it's in the characterisation of Sergeant Mackey that the film's stylistic debt to US thrillers is most prominent. Sporting permanent facial stubble and a scowl of disgust, prone to outbursts of violence, and at odds with his superiors, Mackey is played by Patrick Bergin as a Celtic version of that staple Hollywood type, the maverick cop, memorably embodied by Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan. It doesn't help that he is lumbered with a gormless partner, Dempsey, and unintentionally humorous lines such as "We're being made to look like fools Dempsey!"
Sergeant Mackey aside, MacKenzie's Hollywood plundering is sufficiently energetic to distract from the film's generally fitful narrative structure. Perhaps absorbing too much from Veronica Guerin's real life, screenwriters Sheridan, Ronan Gallagher and Colum McCann have constructed a disjointed narrative path that's dependent on the whims of Hamilton's commissioning editor. Hamilton reports on Shaughnessy, then on drugs, and then on a bank robbery, not because they are causally connected within an evolving storyline, but because she has been asked to do so by her boss.
Joan Allen plays Hamilton with unflappable dignity, often negotiating her way around an inadequate Dublin accent by sheer charisma. But the cloying and simplistic sentiment that underlies the scenes of Hamilton with her loving son leave you with the impression that the film would have benefited from a more ambiguous, less saintly central figure such as the one which emerges from journalist Emily O'Reilly's recent biography of Guerin.
Given the film's self-declared basis in reality, it is a particular surprise to see the IRA so sympathetically portrayed, if not lionised. Not longer the suave super-efficient killers featured in MacKenzie's The Long Good Friday, the IRA members seen here are depicted as paternal protectors of the public good. "This cesspit needs to be cleaned up," they say forlornly to Hamilton, referring to Dublin's drugs crimes, before adding, "Our methods are different but our goals are the same." That a movie devoted to a portrayal of the dogged search for justice could sanction such a muddled portrayal of terrorism is bizarre indeed.
Credits
- Director
- John MacKenzie
- Producers
- Nigel Warren-Green
- Michael Wearing
- Screenplay
- Michael Sheridan
- Ronan Gallagher
- Colum McCann
- Director of Photography
- Seamus Deasy
- Editor
- Graham Walker
- Production Designer
- Mark Geraghty
- Music
- Pól Brennan
- ©Irish Screen Pictures
- Production Companies
- Sky Pictures presents in association with Irish Screen, Bord Scannán na
- hÉireann/The Irish Film Board and Redeemable Features an Irish Screen production
- Produced with the assistance of film incentives provided by the Government of
- Ireland
- Produced in Ireland by Irish Screen Pictures
- Executive Producers
- Kevin Menton
- Peter Newman
- Marie Louise Queally
- Co-executive Producers
- Bruce Davey
- Ralph Kamp
- Rod Stoneman
- Co-producer
- David McLoughlin
- Line Producer
- John McDonnell
- Associate Producer
- Michael Sheridan
- Production Co-ordinator
- Emma Scott
- Unit Production Manager
- Mickey Walsh
- Location Managers
- Dave Morris
- Naoise Barry
- Locations Co-ordinator
- Cait Collins
- 2nd Unit Director
- Eddie Stacey
- Assistant Directors
- Robert Quinn
- Suzanne Nicell
- Aoife Thunder
- Script Supervisors
- Sue Field
- 2nd Unit:
- Sabine Wuhrer
- Casting
- John Hubbard
- Ros Hubbard
- Additional Dialogue
- Guy Andrews
- Script Development Consultant
- Ronan Sheehan
- Script Consultant
- Brendan Bourke
- 2nd Unit Cameramen
- Sean Corcoran
- Peter Robertson
- Camera Operator
- Des Whelan
- Scanning/Recording
- Cinesite Inc
- Special Effects
- Maurice Foley
- Reel FX
- Special Effects Technicians
- Graham Bushe
- Marty Kelly
- Brendan Walsh
- Art Director
- Conor Devlin
- Costume Designer
- Lorna Marie Mugan
- Costume Supervisor
- Jessica O'Leary
- Key Make-up Artist
- Morna Ferguson
- Make-up Artist
- Lynn Johnston
- Key Hair
- Martina McCarthy
- Opening Title Sequence Design
- Image Now Films, Dublin
- Opticals
- GSE
- Additional Incidental Music
- Jimmy Smyth
- Music Performed by
- The Irish Film Orchestra
- Musicians
- Guitar:
- Chris Lawson
- Drums:
- Paul O'Byrne
- Percussion:
- Joji Hirota
- Bass:
- Chris McCarthy
- Orchestral Manager
- Caítriona Walsh
- Music Editor
- Jon Stevenson
- Music Mixer
- Chris Lawson
- Orchestra Recorder/Mixer
- Brian Masterson
- Soundtrack
- "Full Circle" - Sinéad O'Connor; "Sleep with the Ancients" - The Spirit of Eden"; "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue"; "Open Asylum"; "Blockhead"
- Sound Recordist
- Brendan Deasy
- Dubbing Mixers
- Tom Johnson
- Douglas Murray
- John Fitzgerald
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Douglas Murray
- Dialogue Editor
- Sarah Gaines
- Sound Effects Editor
- Cathi Weldon
- ADR
- Recordist:
- Jean McGrath
- Mixers:
- Gerry Roach
- Michelle Cuniffe
- Editor:
- Nicky Moss
- Foley
- Artists:
- Goro Koyama
- Sharon Zupancic
- Andy Malcolm
- Recordists:
- Ron Mellegers
- Todd Beckett
- Andrew Tay
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Eddie Stacey
- Armourer
- John McKenna
- Cast
- Joan Allen
- Sinead Hamilton
- Patrick Bergin
- Mackey
- Liam Cunningham
- John Cosgrave, The Runner
- Kevin McNally
- Tom Hamilton
- Jimmy Smallhorne
- Mickey O'Fagan
- Gerard Flynn
- Dave Hackett
- Jason Barry
- Dempsey
- Pete Postlethwaite
- Martin Shaughnessy
- Des McAleer
- Jimmy Keaveney
- Owen Roe
- John O'Connor
- Gavin Kelty
- Tattoo
- Vincent Walsh
- Shaw
- Frank Grimes
- Paul McCarling
- Ruaidhrí Conroy
- Jamie Thornton
- Liam Carney
- Dessie O'Reilly
- Paul Bennett
- Seamus McDaid
- Paul Hickey
- lawyer
- Mark Dunne
- Keego
- Jeff O'Toole
- Snots Mallon
- Ian Cregg
- Phil Myler
- Fearghal Geraghty
- Colum Hamilton
- Patrick O'Kane
- tall thin man
- Antoine Byrne
- Mary
- Russell Smith
- Kevin
- Sarah Pilkington
- Susie
- Marion Quinn
- Fidelma
- Patrick David Nolan
- police superintendant
- Paul Ronan
- Mangan
- Danny O'Carroll
- Shaughnessy's son
- Gavin O'Connor
- young detective
- Phyllis Ryan
- old woman
- Bryan Baker
- Martin
- Steve Blount
- Duignan
- Michael Devaney
- Porsche salesman
- Annie Ryan
- MC at award ceremony
- Hilda Fay
- Martin's wife
- Tom O'Leary
- Sharon Barker
- Paul Buckley
- reporters
- Kate Perry
- woman in car
- Gertrude Montgomery
- production assistant
- David McCarthy
- car thief
- Gail Fitzpatrick
- TV reporter
- Aoife Moriarty
- heroin taking girl
- Fran Brennan
- police superintendent 2
- Karl Argue
- teenager
- Eamon Glancy
- Simon Delaney
- Sparks bouncers
- Patricia Devine
- Sparks bargirl
- Marty Sheridan
- rave DJ
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- 20th Century Fox (UK)
- 9,635 feet
- 107 minutes 4 seconds
- Dolby Digital
- In Colour