In the Name of the Father

Sheridan's movie seeks to engage and enrage. It's not, however, a film with an ideological axe to sharpen, but one which unfolds, with a sense of passionate conviction, a story of injustice - that of the four people wrongly convicted of the IRA's Guildford pub bombings in October 1974. Tracing back to Belfast in the early '70s to uncover the roots of the tragedy, the narrative goes on to chronicle the British judicial system's wilful imprisonment of the Guildford Four - Gerry Conlon (Day-Lewis), fellow tearaway Paul Hill (Lynch), and their London acquaintances Carole Richardson and Paddy Armstrong - plus their alleged accomplices, Conlon's father (Postlethwaite) and relatives in the Maguire family. It then follows events leading to the highly publicised release of the Four in 1989. Sheridan and co-writer Terry George make some minor factual alterations in order to underscore the emotional pain of the long fight for legal reappraisal.