In the Name of the Father

In the Name of the Father (1993) tells the case of the Guildford Four. After a pub bombing in Guildford in 1974, four young Irish people were arrested, convicted on confessions extracted under duress, and had those convictions quashed fifteen years later. Gerry Conlon's father Giuseppe was arrested in the same investigation and died in prison. The source is Gerry Conlon's own book Proved Innocent. Jim Sheridan directed, with Daniel Day-Lewis as Gerry and Pete Postlethwaite as Giuseppe. What is argued about most is its fidelity. Father and son sharing a cell is the emotional centre of the film and did not happen. Emma Thompson's lawyer is a composite of several people, and the courtroom scenes do not work the way the real proceedings did. Those criticisms are aimed at the method, not at the justice of the case. It received seven Oscar nominations and won none. It runs 133 minutes. Good for: stories of miscarried justice, fathers and sons, and Day-Lewis. Less good for: the interrogation and torture scenes are hard. Anyone wanting to learn the actual case will struggle to separate the invented material, because the film never flags where the line is.