The story of former UVF member Alistair Little. Twenty-five years after Little killed Joe Griffen's brother, the media arrange an auspicious meeting between the two.
"Five Minutes Of Heaven" won the Directing award for Oliver Hirschbiegel and the World Cinema Screen writing Award for Guy Hibbert at the most recent Sundance Film Festival, and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. That, and the fact that Liam Neeson is in it, were the reasons I decided to watch it. I didn't even know what it was about.
It's about violence, and how violence shatters lives, and about how the shattering does not stop when the violence stops. Set in Northern Ireland, it is nothing more, nor less, than the meeting, 25 years later, between the man (Neeson) who in his youth murdered a Catholic for nothing more than being Catholic, and the murdered man's brother (portrayed so powerfully as to bring the audience I saw it with to tears more than once by James Nesbitt). As a child, he watched his brother murdered, and then was blamed by his own mother for killing him because he did nothing to stop it. He was nine.
Both men are shattered, 25 years later. One is seeking redemption and resolution by meeting the brother of the man he killed, and the other is seeking only revenge. I cannot spoil the film for anyone by saying more. All I can say is that this film would bring the Dalai Lama to tears, or Yasser Arafat. It's that powerful, and that well done.
"Five Minutes Of Heaven" won the Directing award for Oliver Hirschbiegel and the World Cinema Screen writing Award for Guy Hibbert at the most recent Sundance Film Festival, and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. That, and the fact that Liam Neeson is in it, were the reasons I decided to watch it. I didn't even know what it was about.
It's about violence, and how violence shatters lives, and about how the shattering does not stop when the violence stops. Set in Northern Ireland, it is nothing more, nor less, than the meeting, 25 years later, between the man (Neeson) who in his youth murdered a Catholic for nothing more than being Catholic, and the murdered man's brother (portrayed so powerfully as to bring the audience I saw it with to tears more than once by James Nesbitt). As a child, he watched his brother murdered, and then was blamed by his own mother for killing him because he did nothing to stop it. He was nine.
Both men are shattered, 25 years later. One is seeking redemption and resolution by meeting the brother of the man he killed, and the other is seeking only revenge. I cannot spoil the film for anyone by saying more. All I can say is that this film would bring the Dalai Lama to tears, or Yasser Arafat. It's that powerful, and that well done.
PASSWORD : moviesnhacks
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