Nothing Personal iSean oddity, it is vaguely based on the so-called Shankill Butchers (hacking people to pieces in lock-up garages being deemed to be particularly unmoral, and radically different from hacking people to pieces by bombing *ass-fronted buildings during rush-hour: or by dropping ‘smart’ bombs on the world’s oldest city). The film revolves around “Lenny” played by James Frain, an actor I have never seen before, who plays the part up to the hilt, as a man driven by clear ideas which he can’t articulate. The main victim, one Liam, is played by John lynch, in his usual manner. He must be getting sick of long hair and kipper ties. Lynch is also stuck with the ludicrous ‘love interest’. The script writer appears to have taken Greek tragedy as a model, but it does not really work. Neither does the “barricade” with an adult-sized hole in it. People who have never experienced ‘civil strife’ ind it hard to understand that barricades are defensive structures. A hole in a barricade is like a hole in a condom – the consequences can be dire. The film ends with a lot of dead bodies; Lenny and his two adult companions are shot to pieces, Liam’s young daughter is killed by a foolish youth from the ‘Catholic’ side. Frain portrays Lenny as s saturnine, tragic figure, and elements of the film can only be described as homo-erotic.
(Thaddeus 0 Sullivan, the director, may have tried to jettison some of this). Lenny rejects one man for assassinat ion as “too ugly”, his relationship with his fellow-killer has sexual undertones. Keith, the teenage recruit, played by Ruairiadh Conroy, looks up to Lenny in the same way that a youth would to a pop-star or a footballer. The younger actors are all very good, but Conroy gets more screen time than the rest of them).