Five Minutes of Heaven

Directed by:  Oliver Hirschbiegel Cast: Liam Neeson, James Nesbitt Running Time: 1 hr 30 mins Rating: Unrated Release Date: November 13, 2009

PLOT: A murderer (Neeson) who killed for the Ulster Volunteer Force (sort of the opposing force to the IRA) prepares to meet with the brother of his victim (Nesbitt).

WHO'S IT FOR? Come on, it has Liam Neeson!  Assuming you're not tired of "the troubles", you want to see it.

EXPECTATIONS: I'm a fan of Nesbitt after seeing his performance in Bloody Sunday, and how can you not expect great things from Liam Neeson?  So yeah, I was hoping for a tour de force two man acting showdown.

SCORECARD (0-10)

ACTORS: Liam Neeson as Alistair Little:  Neeson plays the adult version of Little, after his time in prison.   Despite the set up of the film, the two leads spend very little time together, so most of his work is done alone or with other actors.  Though a murderer in his youth, Little the man regrets his past and speaks out against his involvement in the UVF and his crime.  Because the first half of the film is constructed around an television interview, Little talks a lot and explains how he feels, but you don't really get to see him acting on it.  It isn't until later in the film where I really got a sense that Little was who he claimed to be, a man desperate for forgiveness and redemption.   There are some excellent scenes at the end, but unfortunately by that point I'd written his character off a little.  Still, I think that the part would have been far more confusing in less capable hands. Score:  7

James Nesbitt as Joe Griffin:  Nesbitt gets the more demonstrative part as Griffen, the brother of Little's victim who blames Little for his life falling apart.   In flashbacks we're shown that after the murder, Griffin's mother blamed him for not protecting his brother, despite Griffin being a child at the time.  He's so agitated going to the meeting that it seems odd he would choose to meet Little, until it's revealed he plans to kill him.  Joe Griffin's an odd guy, he has a wife and children but he's so mired in the past that he's willing to go to prison in order to get his "five minutes in heaven" aka what he expects to feel after killing Little.  Nesbitt's not a well known actor in the U.S., but he's really amazing in this role and I hope it will raise his profile.  I'd like to see him continue to get good parts. Score:  8

TALKING: There's a lot of talking, more than I really wanted sometimes.  Because the two leads are kept separate for most of the film, we get either flashbacks or long conversations with secondary characters that describe their inner dilemmas.  It isn't badly written but I'd much rather figure out how they felt by seeing them interact more. Score:  6

SIGHTS: No majestic landscapes or fancy crane shots, but it's still well shot.  Especially the beginning scenes in the car, and the shot when Griffen prepares to enter the interview room to meet Little for the first time since the crime. Score:  6

SOUNDS: The film's made in a verite style, so most of the sound comes from the action within the scene.  It adds to the sense of the film being a documentary or documentary-like. Score:  6

PLOT SPOILERS

BEST SCENE: The scene where Little and Griffen finally meet.  Sure, they don't exchange a lot of words but I was just so happy to get those two in the same room.  I wish it would have lasted longer.

ENDING: It was appropriate, but also a little too fast.  I'm not sure how much time was meant to elapse between their fight and the final phone call, but I needed more time with Nesbitt to get the sense that he had worked through some of this.  Either that or a feeling that he had an epiphany, and though his one scene was good, it wasn't enough.

QUESTIONS: How do I know so little about Irish history from the past century?  And how did so much happen?

REWATCHABILITY: I could watch for the performances alone.  It's neither actors best work, but Neeson and Nesbitt are so good that it doesn't matter.

OVERALL

Before seeing it I wondered why it hadn't gotten a wider release seeing as it stars Neeson, still relatively fresh off the very successful Taken, and director Hirschbiegel who directed German film and YouTube sensation Downfall.  But this has been a weird year for films, I feel like fewer are getting a decent release than usual, and this one just didn't live up to my expectations. The main problem is the film keeps building up to a meeting that takes forever to take place. Little and Griffen speculate about each other, they each talk a lot, but they don't actually meet until nearly the end and the sum total of their time together on screen is about five minutes. The action builds to a really good climax about halfway in, but then Griffen runs off and there's no good release for that tension so I just became frustrated.  Five Minutes in Heaven has a great premise, but the execution leaves something to be desired.

FINAL SCORE: 6/10