Five Minutes of Heaven (2009)

The title is the first thing that shocks in this thought-provoking BBC drama on the supposed reconciliation of murderer and victim on the opposing sides of the "Irish Troubles" - James Nesbitt's damaged character equates "five minutes of heaven" to the feeling he anticipates when he takes his long sought revenge against against the now grown-up teenage gunman who shot down his big brother in front of his disbelieving infant eyes.

Taking a documentary approach, involving the use of hand-held camera shots and vernacular language, the film commences with a suspenseful 20 minute prelude to the modern-day action, by taking us back to the initial killing in Lurgan and the cold-blooded slaying of an innocent Catholic whose only crime is not leaving town quickly enough under orders of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). The film then jumps forward as we see the James Nesbitt and Liam Neeson characters now grown up and preparing for a staged rapprochement in front of TV cameras. At first Nesbitt seems the more damaged, edgy, strung out, never able to exorcise the sight of what he saw as a child. Neeson's character seems calmer and more prepared, indeed, he's almost "dined-out" on his experiences re-living his experiences to various support groups down the years. However, when the time comes for him to face the actual witness to his crime, he too buckles under he pressure and in the end both men are irresistibly drawn to one other to expiate their demons at first violently and then calmly, by the conclusion.

The film works through the power of the source material, the naturalness of the direction and the conviction of the acting, especially by the principals. Nesbitt, so often the BBC's go-to tough guy is here a twitching, on-the-edge individual, who although on the face of it a happily married family man, has never satisfactorily confronted his demons. Neeson, having served, we're told 12 years in prison and as stated re-counted his experience several times over, nonetheless inhabits the same emotional no-man's-land as Nesbitt, indeed, there is no reference to him having any family whatsoever.

A few scenes didn't ring true, for one thing Nesbitt's mother's rage against her pre-teenage son's not somehow protecting his adult brother from an older gunman, seems misplaced. I rather think any mother would have ultimately been relieved that he'd survived never mind that he was the only one left behind as all the other family members went out separately on the fateful night. Perhaps too, the scenes involving the staged-for-TV meet-up between Murphy & Neeson go on too long (in particular a pointless drawn-out exchange between Nesbitt and a female "runner") while on a more basic level, there's really no way either man should have got up unharmed after pitching out a first floor window climaxing their "danse-macabre" at the climax.

There's a debatable point too about whether the film couldn't have been stretched to show both sides of the fence, i.e. a parallel story on the impact of IRA killings on the Protestant community, but the film is more about the universal themes of corrupted innocence, guilt, revenge and ultimately forgiveness that I can understand the film-maker honing his story down to the essence of these two characters. Ultimately, the story ends on a positive note, when the unconditional loving smile of Nesbitt's young daughter returns him to the present and effectively acts as the catalyst to

Fmovies: Five Minutes of Heaven (2009)

I have a confession--when the movie started I thought, okay, another pro-IRA movie with a heart. And it's not--it's a beautifully balanced movie about the personal horrors of the Northern Ireland bloodshed and the longterm aftermath as participants struggle to keep going.

The two main actors are both from Northern Ireland. Liam Neeson plays a Protestant who as a teenage killed a Catholic worker as part of the tit-for-tat violence of the time. James Nesbitt, a Roman Catholic, plays the brother of the man who was killed, and as a witness to the crime he holds a deep grudge about the murder. And in a key act of political insight, the actors were born on the opposite sides--Neeson was raised Catholic and Nesbitt raised Protestant.

The theme of the film is reconciliation in the mold of South African leader Nelson Mandela. The core of the movie is shot in a fancy Irish mansion where television crews are going to watch as the two men, mortal enemies decades before, make an effort to somehow move on, in public, on t.v.

How it goes is for you to see. The murder in the 1970s is fact, easy enough to believe, and the meeting of the men is fiction. Nesbitt is utterly terrific. You might think he's overacting (he is, of course, overacting) but it's appropriate, and gives this non-action film some intensity. Neeson is strong in his restraint and in the one main scene where he gives a well-written speech about how to understand these horrors he is also terrific.

The filming is extremely simple and in fact the whole scenario is relatively linear, even with all the flashbacks. There are some turns to the events by the last half hour, and in a way this is both the dramatic high and the disappointing low of the film (it resorts to somewhat corny and not quite smartly filmed sequences I won't elaborate). But overall the point is so strong and well meant it's hard to worry too much about whether it's a masterpiece.

It's not. It's sometimes slow, it says stuff we probably have absorbed pretty well by now, and it isn't very complex. But what it does do it does with compassion and conviction.

An excruciating depiction of the agony of conscience, portrayed poignantly by the two main actors. The film is not by any means a pleasant experience, but the very fact that it IS an experience is evidence of how greatly it can affect the viewer.

Do not seek easy answers to the great problems of the human condition here - apart, that is, from the crucial lesson that group identities can be vehicles of great evil, and that once inside the group, the only criticism the group-member can hear is that which comes from within the group itself (hence, for example, the need for Muslims to denounce terrorism from inside the mosques) - but if you're interested in understanding the powerful forces of spiritual and emotional dynamics in the context of an irreconcilable dilemma, and if you're sick of saccharine-sweet PC superficiality, send the kids out of the room, turn off the lights, and let this masterpiece move you.

Five Minutes of Heaven fmovies. Its probably pertinent I mention that I'd watch Liam Neeson reading the phone book - and walk away content. Having said that this is a story that needs to be told. People delude themselves if they think the formal end of a conflict ends the collateral damage thats a product of conflict.

The two primary characters are very engaging; The emotion expressed and the reasons for it are carefully and sympathetically explained. There is a gentleness to the story amid the unforgiving violence. In no other historical or fictional portrayal have I heard so simply but properly explained why people got involved in violence in the six counties of Ireland.

I found it "cute" to hear Neeson speaking in his own accent for once.

Tonight I saw one of the best films I've seen in years. You might have to search for this one to find it, because it's probably not going to show up in your local multiplex, but if you can find it, you're in for a moving experience.

"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.

This is the film that young people whose culture is pushing them into terrorism should be shown, before it's too late for them. And this is the film that those who feel no compassion for the terrorists should be shown, before it's too late for them, too.

When friend Vika (Anamaria Marinca) asks Joe Griffen (James Nesbitt), the brother of a man killed in 1975 by one Alistair Little (Liam Neeson), if killing Alistair would not be good for him, Joe replies ' Not good for me? My five minutes of heaven!' And so runs the razor sharp dialog and acting and power of this little film from the UK that relates the story of a 1975 event in Northern Ireland when Catholics and Protestants were at war and the young Protestant Alistair Little (Mark David), as a UVF member (Ulster Volunteer Force), gathers his friends and 'kills a Catholic' - but the murder happens in front of the victim's 11-year-old brother Joe Griffen. Flash forward to 2008 when Alistair Little (now Liam Neeson) has served his prison term and is set up by the media to relate the story of the incident and supposedly meet and shake hands on camera with the now mature Joe Griffen. It is a film about youthful involvement in terrorism and the sequelae that haunts or obsesses the victim's family and the perpetrator. The confrontation between Alistair and Joe is a devastating one.

Guy Hibbert wrote this excruciatingly visceral screenplay and Oliver Hirschbiegel directs a first rate cast. Though Liam Neeson is billed as the star, the film belongs to the powerful acting by James Nesbitt as the vengeful Joe Griffen. The cinematography is dark and dank like the atmosphere in both the warring fog of 1975 and the attempt at reconciliation in 2008. There are subtle pieces of thoughtful enhancement, such as the use of the Mozart 'Requiem' in the near hidden score. In all, this is a moving film about truth and reconciliation that deserves the attention of us all, especially in this time of random acts of terrorism and their possible imprint on our minds and on society.

Grady Harp