IT'S the best Irish film I've ever seen. It gets the mood of the time and portrays Collins as very close to the man I'd imagine: a Scarlet Pimpernel figure who was also a brilliant organiser - he started a war and knew when to stop (unfortunately others didn't).
The fact he was a democrat is also reflected in the film. He talks about the people and he knows he is nothing without them. The film captures the huge range of contacts he had and the fact that he was very good with children.
Dev gets a rough ride. My main quibble is that an impersonal shooting is made to look like an assassination. Like a lot of Irish people, I'm schizophrenic about Dev - I'm reluctant to demonise such an important figure in Irish history and he did inspire great love in people. Jordan has chosen to depict him as consciously treacherous. I would ask the question: did Dev suit himself without knowing it?
Dev distrusted and envied Collins. He felt pushed aside, but in a guerrilla war the man with the fanciest footwork becomes the boss. And later, Collins was lionised in London. But I think Dev was grief-stricken when Collins was shot - in fact, I suspect that he had a nervous breakdown - and the film does suggest this, too.
What it doesn't show is the group which influenced Dev, Cathal Brugha, Austin Stack and Mary MacSwiney worked on him and he probably ended up doing things purely to maintain their support. Mary MacSwiney in particular is believed to have prevented Dev having a rapprochement with Collins.
There should have been more women in the film. Mary MacSwiney is not included, nor the many republican women who were more extreme than the men, urging them on to action.
The film's period detail - with a few small exceptions is good - down to the fact that the anti-Treaty side is slightly more poorly dressed than the pro-Treaty side. That touch of social difference was there. The Dail scenes are excellent. You can see Fianna Fail and Fine Gael coming to life.
Neeson is terrific. He has got Collins's heavy set, jowly look. One of Collins's greatest advantages was that he looked so ordinary, he could disappear into the crowd. Dev, with his nose, you could see a million miles away.
Alan Rickman gets Dev's slow, Limerick teacher's voice. I think it is really a priest's voice. A lot of public speakers copied the way priests spoke at the time. For a lot of Irish people, priests were the only role models when it came to public speaking. Collins's style of speaking is very different: he lived for 10 years in London, where he was intellectually liberated.
When Collins goes to the pub in Clonakilty, the bitterness of the locals is brought across beautifully in the lines: "So you've come down here to sell us your Treaty." It is a good scene, with Collins arriving in all his finery and then just being the ordinary lad.
There should have been a bit more of the Irish language - Irish words were used in Dublin speech at the time and most of the characters, especially Dev, would have been Gaelic Leaguers. The slang should have been more contemporary.
There was a bit of dramatic licence with the car-bomb - I don't think car-bombs were used until the 1960s. But they would have had gelignite.
There were also no armoured cars at the Croke Park massacre and I suspect the armoured cars of the time were grey, not green. Neither is there any record of the Tans shooting up a Dublin slum, although they did do that sort of thing in rural villages.
The film gets it right in depict ing the RIC detectives with Northern accents. The upper ranks of the RIC would all have been Protestant and so, statistically, there would have been a 191 of Northerners. Also, a certain type of senior officer from Belfast would have been seen as particularly tough.
There is no doubt that Collins was the hero of the time. Because Fianna Fail was in power for such a long time, both he and Griffith were airbrushed out of the picture. This film digs him out of the shadows.