Fifty Dead Men Walking

Belfast, the end of the eighties. Marty McGartland is twenty and sells stolen goods on the street. The police notice him and make an offer: get into the IRA and give us information. He agrees. He rises in the organisation, wins trust, and the information he passes prevents planned attacks. He is living two lives at once and lying in both. When it becomes clear there is a leak, the search begins. Kari Skogland writes and directs. Jim Sturgess plays Marty and Ben Kingsley plays Fergus, his handler. The film is adapted from McGartland's own book, whose title comes from a claim about how many lives were saved. McGartland objected to the film and said the narrative did not reflect what happened; there was a legal process between him and the production. The tension the narrative builds is not action but continuance; the character lives every day with the possibility of being caught and the film does not gather that into a single event. The matter it treats is the position of the informer; the narrative builds him as neither hero nor traitor, and both sides use him. The streets of Belfast were largely represented elsewhere and the period detail stayed limited. Who it is for: viewers who like thrillers set in the Northern Ireland period. Who it is not for: the historical context is given incompletely, some characters are shallow, and the film is contested while claiming to be true.