When the Sky Falls
Synopsis
Racing at 100 miles an hour through the Dublin hills, we find Sinead interviewing the notorious armed robber Martin Shaughnessy (Peter Postlethwaite) as his car screeches through the narrow country lanes. Shaughnessy insists that the corruption and degradation of Dublin is due, not to the likes of him - everyday armed robbers - but to the ruthless gangs running the ever growing and vastly profitable drug business. A business that corrupts all that it touches. These are the people that Sinead wants to expose; the drug barons gorging themselves on the city.
Soon after the interview is published Shaugnessy is assassinated. At the murder scene Sinead meets Mackey (Patrick Bergin), a local Police Detective. Mackey is the classic cynical cop - tough, angry and tired. Though he knows he's fighting a losing battle investigating these sorts of crimes, there's still just enough of the idealist left, to make him carry on. However, though Sinead and Mackey have the same purpose, their methods could not be more different.
So the scene is set. Heavily out-gunned in every respect, Sinead risks everything in her relentless pursuit of the underworld gangsters with only her wit, guile and sheer bravery to protect her. It's an investigation in which she discovers that truth has a cost, and that ultimately someone has to pay . . .
Details
- Year
- 2000
- Type of film
- Features
- Running time
- 106 min approx
- Format
- 35mm
- Director
-
John MacKenzie
- Producer
- Kevin Menton, Peter Newman
- Executive Producer
- Kevin Menton, Peter Newman
- Editor
- Graham Walker
- Screenwriter
- Colum McCann
- Director of Photography
- Seamus Deasy
- Sound
- Brenolam Deasy
- Principal cast
- Joan Allen, Patrick Bergin, Liam Cunningham, Jimmy Smallhouse, Peter Postlethwaite, Jason Baroy
Genre
Categories
Production Status
Production Company
Irish Screen Ltd Contact: Nigel Warren-Green 34 Lower Baggot Street Dublin 2 Ireland Tel: 00 353 1 662 3505 Fax: 00 353 1 662 3507
Sales Company
Icon Entertainment International Charlotte Building 17 Gresse Street London W1T 1QL England T +44 (0)20 7927 6900 F +44 (0)20 7927 6901 www.iconmovies.net
Page updates
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See also
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When the Sky Falls
Director: John MacKenzie
Year: 2000
When journalist Veronica Guerin was shot dead by a member of the Dublin underworld, a film based on her life was already planned. In the eight months before her murder, she had been advising Michael Sheridan, a fellow journalist on Ireland's Sunday Independent on a script he was writing about Dublin's drug barons, a world that Guerin knew well. After a few months, Sheridan persuaded her that the lead character should be based on her. Guerin finally agreed, on condition that the character had another name and the film would not glamourise crime.<br /> <br /> Following Guerin's murder, the future of the film was thrown into doubt. Besides worries about the danger of going ahead, Sheridan was concerned that a film might be exploitative. "My fear was that if the Hollywood studios got their hands on it, the story would be sanitised and sentimentalised beyond belief," he says.<br /> <br /> Instead, he brought the project to Irish Screen. Producer Nigel Warren-Green says: "Everyone was quite frightened at the time - the gangsters were still running Dublin, no arrests had been made and they thought they had got away with it."<br /> <br /> Colum McCann came in to write a new draft, making it more personal and closer to the real events, but the struggle to keep the story true to life made it hard to involve production partners. Warren-Green says: "Many potential backers couldn't believe a female character could be so courageous. Others found the plot implausible - even though it was based on actual events." Eventually, Sky Pictures and the Irish Film Board came on board and the film was shot in spring in and around Dublin under tight security, and was released in the UK in June.
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