London,

Explosive portrait of a traitor’s Troubles

 

I blame my son for going against his family and his community,” says a distraught father at the graveside of one of his children who has been tortured and killed by the IRA for being an informer. Tribal rather than familial loyalties went a long way in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

Fifty Dead Men Walking, however, is not about this man but about the real-life Martin McGartland, the young Catholic who, prompted by the British, wormed his way into the favours of the IRA and informed on them.

Though he was exposed and tortured, he escaped death by throwing himself from a tower block window. He was then rescued by the British and given a safe home in Canada — only to be nearly killed by an IRA hitman while there.

Continually moved from one place to another, and given a new identity, he remains alive but probably will never see his wife and children again.

This much we know about McGartland from his autobiography of the same name (the title alludes to the number of people his actions supposedly saved). Canadian director Kari Skogland, in adapting the story, has inevitably taken some dramatic liberties; even so, this is a thriller set in terrible circumstances which, without preaching or taking sides, holds the attention like a vice.

One of the reasons is the performance of Jim Sturgess as McGartland, who we see at the beginning of his ruinous odyssey as a young man on the make, not averse to stealing cars and trying to sell clothes door to door in the Belfast of 1988. He and his friend Sean (Kevin Segers) are part of the repressed Catholic community of West Belfast, where you couldn’t easily get a proper job unless you were Protestant.

Captured after almost escaping a police check, he is asked to become an informer and refuses. But when he meets Fergus (Ben Kingsley), a British security officer, and witnesses a kneecapping by the IRA, he changes his mind.

Sturgess paints McGartland as neither hero nor villain but a naive young man who had little idea of what he was getting into. He received money and a new car from Fergus, lived with and then married the girl he loved (another fine performance from Natalie Press). It may have been a dangerous game to play but the compensations for a hitherto feckless man were considerable.

Kingsley, as the officer who becomes first his mentor and then almost a father figure, gives a nuanced performance. He appears sincere about looking after his charge — or is he simply determined to prove to his superiors that he has a success on his hands?

It is Sturgess who dominates the film, though, showing us how an ordinary man can get involved in the messy, heartless business of informing, seemingly unaware of what might eventually transpire.

Skogland, the producer and writer as well as director, together with her able cinematographer Jonathan Freeman, paint the Belfast scene with gritty efficiency which, interspersed with some real footage of the time, gives the film its authenticity. It is hard to watch at times, but it shows with admirable clarity what war really means as each side attempts to outsmart the other. As Fergus says, “The price of a conscience is often death.”

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