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In a less ambitious context this combination of inventive slackness and intellectual slipperiness would not much matter. We could simply relax and enjoy a rattling good yarn--Braveheart without the kilts, Viva Zapata! without the sombreros--by a director who is shot for shot and scene for scene a masterly craftsman. But Neil Jordan, who is of course Irish, claims this is "an examination of conscience." He is also volubly aware that the culture of violence that has haunted his country's history was embodied by Collins and his cohorts. Jordan therefore owes to the present, as well as to the past that shaped it, something more than the higher blarney of his interviews and his press releases. He owes us--not to mention the fascinatingly ambiguous figure of Michael Collins--a rigorous and nuanced honesty instead of the admittedly entertaining fantasia on historical themes that he has delivered.
--With reporting by Elizabeth L. Bland and Georgia Harbison/New York and Helen Gibson/London