The General
Best known forDeliverance(1972), John Boorman produced what is  arguably his greatest film withPoint Blank(1967). In that ambiguous gangster flick, set in a pastel L.A.  wasteland, Lee Marvin may or may not be a walking dead man, animated by the desire to avenge his fatal betrayal by the woman he loved and his best  friend. Many of Boorman's films take the form of quests, fueled by some dream  of utopia; on some level,Point Blankis the tragedy of a just man, appalled  and ultimately defeated by the complexity of his world's corruption.The Generalbegins with the death of Martin Cahill--celebrated Dublin gangster  who stole millions during the 1980s--then literally reverses the approach and  assault of his IRA assassin, flashing back in time, back through Cahill's  colorful, criminal quest for his kind of ideal community. Boorman says his  Cahill is a throwback to those Celtic chieftains of old who ruled by thievery  and violence; as an anachronism, this charming, brutal bear of a man  (perfectly incarnated by Brendan Gleeson) is undeniably reprehensible, but he  stands in deliberate contrast to the institutionalized hypocrisy and  corruption of church, state, and IRA alike. Brazenly hanging out in  police HQ to establish an alibi; maneuvering gracefully through perfectly  choreographed heists; dispensing affection to his wife, and her sister;  nailing the hands of a suspected cheat to a pool table; handing out food to women whose husbands are out of work--Gleeson's bluff, often comic gangster is always bigger than life, an eruption of unsocialized energy through the  layers-deep sediment of socially acceptable sin. (In real life as in the  film, Cahill always hid his face  under a sweatshirt hood, or behind his  spread fingers--he looks like some mischievous, giant-child.) Shot by the  great Seamus Deasey in color, then transferred to black-and-white stock,The  Generalis visually voluptuous, the anatomy of a charismatic monster's soul expressed in lustrous light, silken shades of gray, and ebony shadows.--Kathleen Murphy