Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
When the Sky Falls (1999)
Director: John MacKenzie
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
How do you sell the real-life story of journalist Victoria Guerin (here renamed Sinead Hamilton), killed for speaking out against Dublin's drug barons? As with Erin Brockovich, a feisty mother juggles a dangerous crusade with the demands of family life, but where Erin's enemies were anonymous businessmen, Sinead's are rough and ruined hustlers. Erin's victims were in the dark about the poison entering their blood, but Sinead's have a choice. John (The Long Good Friday) MacKenzie would seem well placed to appreciate such muddy details. For much of the time he does well, treating Sinead (Allen) not as a heroine, but as an ordinary complex individual. She enjoys a charged relationship with one of her sources, Mickey (Smallhorne). Does he provide some sort of sexuality - raciness - lacking in her life, or is that just what she wants him to think? As in Nixon and The Ice Storm, Allen's disheartened eyes keep her secrets locked tight. The Dublin police with whom she joins forces, meanwhile, are incompetent and occasionally vicious, with the most shocking scene saved for the murder of a drug addict forced to act as a mole. It's all the stranger then, that elsewhere the film plays like a dreary TV movie.Author: CO'Su
Cast & crew
Director: John MacKenzie
Producer: Nigel Warren-Green, Michael Wearing
Cast: Joan Allen, Patrick Bergin, Liam Cunningham, Kevin McNally, Jimmy Smallhorne, Gerard Flynn, Jason Barry, Pete Postlethwaite, Des McAleer, Owen Roe full cast
Duration: 107 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now