John Boorman’s film is the story of Martin Cahill, a Dublin gangster of the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Cahill’s story is fairly interesting. He was a small time thief whose gang rose up to become a crime wave so big that – after an art heist which included the swiping of a Vermeer – the police followed him everywhere (not stake-out following, but standing at his front door and walking 3 feet behind him following). His attempts to shake his tails, his planning and execution of robberies, his avoidance of conviction on an earlier heist, and his constant obscuring of his own face from public view are stuff of crime legend. Brendan Gleeson has great fun with a simple character in ridiculous circumstances.

Boorman writes good patter between the crooks, and he paces his heist scenes well, all with a comic touch. Boorman also has a keen insight into the economic and political pressures in everyday Irish life, and he presents his observations without any great speechifying.

There are two glaring problems with the film. First, Jon Voight plays the Inspector who hounds Cahill. Voight is a glutton for scenery, and his brogue is something you see in an Irish Spring commercial. I understand Boorman and Voight go way back to Deliverance days, but Voight’s presence here is very disconcerting.

Second, Boorman shows Cahill doing something so brutal about 3/5 through the film thatyou withdraw emotional investment in Cahill. While Boorman tries to make it all part of the lore of Cahill, in fact, tonally, the film seemed off-kilter from that point forward.

Therein lies the rub with real-life crook pictures. Cahill is portrayed as man of vision, and a good guy, one in a line of devil-may-care thieves in a corrupt system. His associates are all twinkle-in-the-eye goodfellas just trying to get by. This is old hat, from the Jesse James just being a misunderstood man of honor file. In fact, Cahill was a vicious thug, as is necessary if you are going to net 40 million pounds over a 20 year career. He attempted to blow up a forensic scientist who was to testify against him. His gang was not just band of merry robbers, but they participated in extortion, heroin dealing, and rape. Indeed, Cahill once nailed a victim to a snooker table, and in 1993, one of Cahill’s associates was arrested and charged with raping his own 14-year-old daughter (Cahill personally intimidated the young girl giving evidence).

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The Winslow Boy. David Mamet’s period piece about an Edwardian scandal is sharp and deep. A proper, emotionally serene English family strives to clear the name of a family member from what they perceive as a slander (the youngest son is accused of the theft of 5 shillings and expelled from navy school). The father (Nigel Hawthorne of The Madness of King George) is an eccentric banker who sacrifices the family’s position (financial and otherwise) to clear his son’s name. His daughter (Rebecca Pidgeon) is a suffragette engaged to a military man. As the scandal envelops the family, her social life is shattered.

The family engages the services of Sir Robert Morton (Jeremy Northam), a leading barrister and politician who opposes women’s suffrage but finds himself inexorably drawn to the case and Pidgeon. What follows is a psychological study of the ties of family and the limits of honor as well as a satisfying courtroom drama.

The dialogue is understated, which is rare for Mamet, but it is still rhythmic. Mamet treats each character, major and minor, with dignity. There are no fops or fools. Everyone is multi-faceted and thus, interesting.

Visually stunning, but ultimately empty, Martin Scorses directs the story of the weekend of an EMS technician in New York City (Nicolas Cage) who has been on a streak of losing patients and is particularly haunted by the death of a young girl. We accompany Cage from call to call with his three partners (John Goodman, Ving Rhames, and Tom Sizemore) to the hell that is bleeding and in-need-of-medical-attention New York. One stop takes Cage to a young woman (Patricia Arquette) whose father has suffered a heart attack. The man is revived by Cage, and in bonding with Arquette, he begins a reconciliation with his guilt. The movie has its moments, but Scorsese’s best work is when his visual ingenuity acts seamlessly with the narrative. For example, in Casino his outstanding shot of Sharon Stone throwing the casino chips into the air suggests her allure and you “get” why De Niro is immediately entranced.

In Bringing Out the Dead, Scorsese’s hyper-drives through the city illustrate Cage’s sense of dread and adrenaline rush. But the rest of the camera work is pointlessly showy and gimmicky, mainly because the narrative has died half-way through. While we know about Cage’s guilt, we want to move on, but the film doesn’t let us.

Cage, however, is very good. I was surprised that he was not talked up as a nominee. I thought his performance connected on the manic, the gentle and the guilt-ridden at the right times, without overplaying his hand. Arquette, on the other hand, is quite awful as the concerned daughter of the comatose father. She simply lacks the heft for the role of recovering and embittered drug addict.

Man on the Moon. Milos Forman wastes a fair amount of his time on minor but bizarre figures (see The People versus Larry Flynt). Fortunately, Andy Kaufman was an inoffensive comic with a streak of ingenuity, as opposed to a pornographer who later wrapped the First Amendment around his gynecological forays. So, the ride is a little more pleasant and accomplished, and there is no false, big issue at stake, as was the case in Flynt.

Jim Carrey’s turn is very good, and the supporting work of Danny Devito (as Kaufman’s agent) and Paul Giamatti (as Kaufman’s sidekick Bob Zmuda) helps to round out the character. Forman, however, goes to the well once to often in casting Courtney Love as the love interest. She worked as a porn mogul’s gal in The People versus Larry Flynt, but here, she’s lost.