Fifty Dead Men Walking (2009)

I am unable to provide an accurate review of this film for one reason: NO SUBTITLES! How do you distribute this film on DVD and streaming without the one necessary tool needed to fully understand the dialogue. The accents are very thick and after 30 minutes, I decided to stop trying. If they are not going to provide subtitles, I'm not going to struggle through it. I need the subtitles because, at my age, I am slightly hard of hearing, so I always use close captioning / subtitles. Add the fact that it is difficult to pick up what the characters are saying and it's a waste of time. Too bad because it appears to be a good film!!

"Fifty Dead Men Walking" is a true story movie which has to do with Martin McGartland's life story. This story shows us Martin McGartland who is recruited by the British Police to spy on the IRA.I liked this movie because it's a movie that is based on a true story and because of its plot. I also liked it because of the cast and the interpretations of it. Ben Kingsley who plays as Fergus made a great interpretation and Jim Sturgess who played as Martin McGartland made an also great interpretation for one more time. I also believe that Kari Skogland did a nice job in the direction of this movie.Finally I have to tell you that I really recommend this movie because it shows us a different way of things and how these things happened.

I will not summarise the film as many people have already done that here. What want to do is comment on some of the inaccuracies and bias in the film. 1 Firstly as someone else pointed out Martin was never shot in Canada2 In one part of the film KIngsely says that the IRA are terrorists and Martin replies that he is discriminated against by the British who act like terrorists. This is never challenged and its never mentioned that the security forces contain Northern Irish people too. The film acts almost as if protestants are not legitimate citizens on Northern Ireland. It seems to want to reduce the conflict to the facile level of a British army occupying Ireland which is what ignorant Americans always claimed. So in this way it panders to ignorance.3 For the information of the film makers people in 1980's Northern Ireland referred to parking lots as car parks, called hoods, yobs or hoodlums, and did not used the sentence construction 'get to' as in 'I get to have a new car...'. The attempt to Americanise the English language (presumably so that ignorant people can understand it better) detracts from its realism.4 At the beginning of the film Martin runs from a police/ Army checkpoint and is chased until he is caught. I can assure the film makers that in Northern Ireland at that time anyone running from a checkpoint would have been shot. Ohh but then we would have had no film, so that can't be allowed to happen can it?

I don't care about the accuracy. It's closer than 90 percent of what we see out of Hollywood. Having said, kudos to Canadian director Kari Skogland on a terrifically entertaining film. Great performances by all actors. Ben Kingsley and Jim Sturgess were especially great. They obviously had good chemistry which played out on the screen. Jim Sturgess is a talented young actor. The soundtrack was exactly right, helping to create a sense that I had just had a glimpse into what their lives must've been like. I measure films based on how they made me feel. This one was a "Wow!"Look forward to seeing more from all!