{"id":74,"date":"2011-06-16T06:30:09","date_gmt":"2011-06-16T06:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/movieox.com\/?p=74"},"modified":"2011-06-25T18:06:30","modified_gmt":"2011-06-25T18:06:30","slug":"kill-the-irishman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/?p=74","title":{"rendered":"Kill the Irishman"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, let me say that this film stars Ray Stevenson<\/a>, who is one of my favorite actors.\u00a0 I’ve rarely enjoyed anything on television as well as I enjoyed Ray Stevenson as Titus Pullo in Rome<\/em>.\u00a0 It would be natural to think I’d be predisposed to react positively to any movie he’s in. Let me address those concerns:\u00a0 Fuck you, Ray Stevenson is awesome.<\/p>\n

Now moving on.<\/p>\n

Kill the Irishman<\/em> was recommended to me by an Irish friend who shall remain nameless.\u00a0 (though if his credit keeps improving I’ll be auctioning off his social security number on this site, stay tuned)\u00a0 The friend in question does like ALL movies Irish so he’s not particularly reliable in this instance; but listen to this cast: Besides Ray Stevenson they have Vincent D’Onofrio, Christopher Walken, and Val Kilmer.\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 And also if you watch Mad Men<\/em> you might recall the Count’s daughter that talked Don Draper off the job in California, Laura Ramsey.\u00a0 Yup, cast is solid.<\/p>\n

But in the end, that may not get you much; the Star Wars prequels had solid casts.\u00a0 Blech.<\/p>\n

I’m also a fan of the director, John Hensleigh.\u00a0 He directed the often maligned 2004 Tom Jane Punisher<\/em>.\u00a0 I enjoyed that movie very much.\u00a0 I’m not going to sit here and say its a good film; but compared to 3\/4 of comic book adaptations it’s a fist sized diamond.\u00a0 John gets story; besides writing Punisher<\/em> among other movies I like less, he also wrote Die Hard with a Vengence<\/em>.\u00a0 Easily the best entry in the franchise.<\/p>\n

Ok, enough with the resume.\u00a0 Kill the Irishman<\/em> is based on the true story of the crime wars in the 1970’s in Cleveland.\u00a0 Ray Stevenson is the titular Irishman, Danny Green, and Val Kilmer is a cop who grew up in the same neighborhood (who wrote the book that became this movie).\u00a0 Danny comes to be a power in the Cleveland underworld basically by accident.\u00a0 He starts out as a longshoreman who doesn’t take any shit and ends up president of the local union and all the shenanigans that entails.\u00a0 He makes inroads with the Sicilians also by accident when arranging to square a friend’s gambling debts with stolen merchandise from his docks.\u00a0 He rises in the mafia world and at a certain point asks what exactly the bosses were doing for their cut of his money.\u00a0 He concludes: nothing.\u00a0 And the war begins.<\/p>\n

Most of what goes down in this film, really happened.\u00a0 During a year stretch of the gang violence, nearly 40 bombs were detonated.\u00a0 Keep in mind, this was in Ohio not Belfast.\u00a0 The Cleveland turf war became a national news story and Danny Green attained a kind of cult hero status.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed the hell out of this movie.\u00a0 It begins like a fairly stock gangster film; but at some point it veers from the beaten path.\u00a0 Because its not really a gangster film.\u00a0 It’s a biopic.\u00a0 This was a real man and some people thought he was a hero.\u00a0 And many people wanted to kill him.\u00a0 The movie gets into your heart a little; then it starts with the bagpipes and you’re hooked.\u00a0 Good stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, let me say that this film stars Ray Stevenson, who is one of my favorite actors.\u00a0 I’ve rarely enjoyed anything on television as well as I enjoyed Ray Stevenson as Titus Pullo in Rome.\u00a0 It would be natural to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions\/164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}