The General

John Boorman, who won the 1998 Cannes Film Festival's Direction award for this film, previously won the same Cannes award almost three decades earlier for his Leo the Last (1969) about an alienated aristocrat in a London slum. Shot in widescreen color (but printed in sharp black-and-white), The ...more

By the time John Boorman shot The General, its subject had already entered the realm of contemporary folklore. A gangster killed by the police in 1994, Martin Cahill gets the full treatment from Boorman, who does an impressive job of explaining his way of life without excusing it, showing the desperation of his origins without glamorizing his crimes. He's assisted by a tremendously believable performance by Brendan Gleeson, who characterizes Cahill as a man who compensates for a doughy ...more