Film Review: '71 (2015)

If you want to make a decent thriller these days, your first step to success is to make sure your budget is low. The lower the better. A budget that wouldn't pay for Robert Downey Jr's per diem on The Avengers: Age of Ultron is ideal. Minuscule funding means your film can't rely on extravagant action set pieces or big stars like, uh, Robert Downey Jr. Instead of those two crutches, your film will have to focus on character and plot, on the writing, in other words. '71 is a beautiful example of this.

The story is set in Belfast in, of course, 1971. The Troubles have reached a full, rolling boil, and a raw group of Brit soldiers have been sent out into a Catholic area to provide protection for a group of RUC officers (the Protestant-dominated police force loathed by Catholics) who are conducting a raid on a house. A riot ensues, one soldier is killed and another, Pvt. Gary Hook, becomes separated from his platoon and must go on the run through enemy territory. Hook sticks out like a sore thumb thanks to his accent and uniform, and nothing has prepared him for this kind of situation. The action takes place over one night, and Hook becomes the prize quarry for two different IRA groups, a trio of ruthless MI5 men, and his own platoon.

The hunt for Hook is deftly handled. The different groups looking for him have motives that aren't immediately apparent, and the double-crosses and deaths soon begin to mount. The different narrative strands are kept coherent, and thanks to the low budget, there's no time wasted on pointless relationships or redundant background information. In short, the strength of '71 lies in the script's efficiency and attention to detail. One standout example of this is our brief intro to Hook. Before he arrives in Northern Ireland we learn (or infer) from only a few brief scenes that Hook is from a poor background, has no girlfriend, and his only relative is his young brother who's living in an orphanage. This intro gives us a rooting interest in Hook, but it stops well short of an assault on our tear ducts, which a fatter, lazier film might have done. Even minor characters are given a polish that makes them more than predictable storytelling pawns. The platoon's commander is initially presented as a bit of an ineffectual, upper-class twit, but at the end he's got more backbone and more of our sympathy. And what might be the most memorable character is a Protestant boy, who can't be older than ten, who has been transformed by the Troubles into a menacing, pint-sized Liam Neeson.

What gives the film a lot of its tension is that Hook is played by a relative unknown. Put a big star in this role and the audience knows he's going to survive until the end. Stick a nobody in the role and now we're not so sure. Also, I wonder if calling the soldier Hook isn't an ironic nod to the Pvt. Hook in Zulu? The latter film is about heroic empire-building, while this one is about an empire falling apart. And that brings us back to the budget. A Marvel-sized payroll would have given us superfluous characters, action scenes that went on too long, and preening superstars. A low budget, like living on a low income, forces filmmakers into smart and creative choices. They can't paper over plot holes with money. The French film industry has been cranking out smart action-thrillers like '71 for years, and I can only wish there were filmmakers doing the same.

Book Review: I Hear the Sirens in the Street (2013) by Adrian McKinty

This is the second in Adrian McKinty's trilogy in the making about Inspector Sean Duffy, a cop with the Royal Ulster Constabulary during the Troubles. This novel opens in 1982 with the DeLorean car company offering a glimmer of hope for the battered economy of Northern Ireland while the wars between the IRA and Britain, and between Britain and Argentina, rage in the background. Duffy and his team are called in to investigate the discovery of a torso in a suitcase. The body, it turns out, belonged to a visiting American, and the cause of death is a rare and difficult to acquire poison. The trail lead to Boston and to John DeLorean himself, and ends with more bodies and a lot of bullets flying through the air.

Sirens has many of the same strengths and pleasures as Duffy's previous outing (The Cold Cold Ground, my review here), especially its evocation of a particular time and place. McKinty brings Belfast and its environs to seamy and sad life, and for anyone wondering why the 1980s produced a diaspora of the best and brightest from N.I., this novel provides the answer. And McKinty continues to show he's one of the best in the business at crafting a police procedural; the dynamic between Duffy and his fellow "peelers" is engaging, entertaining, and always rings true.

Having dished out the praise I now have to say that Sirens isn't quite as good as its predecessor. The main problem I had is with the plot, which has some gaping holes I couldn't get past. Without letting slip any spoilers I'll just say that the poison angle seemed far fetched; the trip to Boston felt superfluous and breaks the story's mood; and the disposal of the American's body made no sense considering that the place where he died had a far more obvious and convenient option for making people disappear. These weren't deal breakers in terms of enjoying the novel, but I certainly didn't have these kinds of problems with the plot in the previous novel.

A more minor problem has to do with Sean Duffy: the more he's off investigating on his own (he does that a lot here), the less interesting a character he is. When he's interacting with fellow cops the story, and his character, has an elan and energy that seems to go AWOL when he's on his own. I think the problem may be that Duffy as a solo operator feels like a lot of other fictional detectives, a strongly-realized detective, but not the standout character he is when he's part of a team. But that's a minor quibble. Duffy is still a cut above most of his fictional peers, and I'm hoping that by some means McKinty can be convinced to keep Duffy going past the next novel.

Book Review: The Cold Cold Ground (2012) by Adrian McKinty

The fact that The Cold Cold Ground is, for the most part, a police procedural shouldn't be cause for comment except that no one else, as far as I know, has had the bright idea to set a procedural during the Troubles, Northern Ireland's long-running sectarian conflict. A Troubles-set procedural seems like an obvious and rich source for story ideas, so it's a bit odd that no one's done it until now. I'll take a guess that there's still so much residual animosity and bitterness about the Troubles floating around the British Isles that any attempt to fictionalize the subject guarantees a certain amount of unpleasant blowback for the author. If there is any in this case, at least the critics can't complain that the writer's not up to the job.

The novel kicks off with the discovery of a man's mutilated body in a junked car. At first it looks like yet another killing related to the Troubles, but it rapidly emerges that this might be the work of a serial killer targeting homosexuals. Detective Sean Duffy is the lead investigator and he soon finds that the IRA may be involved, and that a woman found hanged in an apparent suicide may also be part of the mystery. This all plays out against the background of Catholic Belfast reaching the boiling point as the IRA  hunger strikers in Maze Prison begin to die. 

McKinty has crafted a novel that works beautifully as a procedural and as a period piece (the story's set in 1981) capturing the look and mood of a region with one foot in a civil war and the other on a banana peel. The procedural aspect of the novel is exceptional. Duffy is shown to be very much part of a team. His fellow officers aren't just there to pass on important bits of plot information at key moments, they also get to be clever, add commentary, and crack wise. Duffy clearly feels comfortable working with this group and relies on them, despite the fact that he's a Catholic in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a predominantly Protestant organization despised by Catholics. The scenes of Duffy with his fellow cops are probably the strongest elements in the novel. The final sections of the story have Duffy becoming more of a lone wolf, and they work well in giving the story a thrillerish finale, but I found myself wishing that the procedural aspects had kept going to the end. Also, some of the players who come into the story towards the end are rather high up the political food chain, and that moves things well beyond a police procedural.  The transition is a bit jarring. That aside, the mystery at the heart of the story is satisfying and cleverly thought out.

McKinty brings the Belfast of 1981 alive with short, sharp descriptions of shattered streets, grandiose sectarian graffitti, menacing British firepower in the air and on the ground, and a populace that's always keyed up to either fight, flee or heap abuse on the police. The main reason I can believe that McKinty's descriptions are bang on is that they match up perfectly with an excellent memoir about the Troubles by Malachi O'Doherty called The Telling Year: Belfast 1972 (I'm pretty sure this was the book) that I read a few years ago. I think what McKinty captures best is the all-encompassing feeling of dread and tension that people, especially the police, lived with. Northern Ireland, as seen through Duffy's eyes, is a minefield of actual and theoretical dangers, any one which can be triggered by a wrong step, a wrong turn or a wrong word. It's an intensely dispiriting world (even the weather's crap) and McKinty makes it feel very, very real.

Sean Duffy is a strong and entertaining protagonist. He's smart, funny and believable as a cop. Far too many fictional cops moan and groan about their jobs. Duffy seems to like what he's doing and is dead keen on getting results. He's not a jaded or beaten down cop (there are far too many of those), he's not too cynical, and he's human enough to indulge in the odd bit of very petty corruption. Duffy's keenly aware that he's a fish out of water as both a university-educated policeman and as a Catholic in the RUC. The dichotomies in Duffy's life seem to find symbolic expression in an unexpected event that takes place in a public washroom. It's an odd and audacious scene that begs for some kind of follow-up, which, I suspect, will come in the next Duffy novel.

I have a minor complaint about Duffy that really qualifies as more of a pet peeve: we're forced to learn far too much about his musical tastes. Lately it seems to me that every mystery writer has to make a point of telling us what their detective likes to listen to. In the past few years I've read mysteries by Ken Bruen, Massimo Carlotto, and Gianfranco Carofiglio in which their detectives musical choices are regularly mentioned. It's a pedestrian way to build a character, and the worst part is that these Desert Island Discs moments always (for me) break down the fourth wall. I always feel I'm being buttonholed by the author for a bit of a natter about his favourite songs and artists. I blame Elmore Leonard. He introduced the idea of characters referencing their choices in music and movies, and after that the genie was out of the bottle. One of these days I'd like to see a mystery writer give us a brilliant detective with really horrible taste in music. How about a sleuth who only listens to ABBA and Slim Whitman? I shall now stable my hobby horse.

I've read four other crime novels by Adrian McKinty and The Cold Cold Ground is jostling for the number one position on my list of favourites. It has the tension, fast pace and intrigue you expect from any mystery/thriller, but it also manages to evoke a time and place that's beginning to fade into the past. And in Sean Duffy we have a character who is not only compelling, but, I'm guessing, is going to be changing in upcoming novels. One final aside: is there a more perfect example of Brit/Irish understatement than calling a low-grade civil war the Troubles? If it had been even more bloody would it have been called A Spot Of Bother?

Book Review: Dr. Yes (2010) by Colin Bateman

Colin Bateman can do better than this. I've read two of his Dan Starkey mysteries, Belfast Confidential and The Horse With My Name, and they work quite well as hard-edged mysteries with a side order of comedy. In Dr. Yes the emphasis is on the comedy, and there's very little edge, hard or otherwise. In fact, this novel could almost qualify as a cosy mystery, and that's not something a lad-lit writer like Bateman would want. The Starkey books are definitely lad-lit, with lots of boozing, casual violence, sexism, and a hero who's lippy and self-centred. Those can be good things.

Dr. Yes is the third of a series featuring Mystery Man, the owner of No Alibis, a mystery bookstore in Belfast. The never named owner of No Alibis (it's an actual Belfast bookstore) finds himself investigating the murder of Augustine Wogan, a forgotten mystery writer, whose wife has disappeared after going to a cosmetic surgery clinic run by a Dr. Yeschenkov. Aided by his girlfriend, Alison, and Jeff the shop assistant, Man solves the case. This is really sounding like a cosy now, isn't it?

The plot of  Dr. Yes is pretty generic, with only minor twists and turns. As I said, this novel's all about the comedy, and to that end Bateman makes Man a grab bag of comic cliches: he's a hypochondriac, he speaks his mind at inopportune moments, he's a coward, and he never passes up a chance to needle someone. The problem is that Bateman can't maintain a high enough level of comic writing. Bits and pieces of the book are amusing, and it's clear Bateman's a good writer, but too often Dr. Yes begins to sound like a mediocre sitcom. This is particularly true of the bantering between Man and Alison, which consists mostly of unfunny insults and comebacks. Their dialogue isn't mediocre sitcom writing, it's bad sitcom writing; think Everybody Loves Raymond bad. The best thing I can say about Dr. Yes is that at least Mystery Man doesn't solve his mysteries with the help of a cat. There are some lines that simply can't be crossed, even by sitcom writers.