Blown Away
The early to mid 1990s saw a sudden rise in movies being made about Irish Terrorists (IRA) that swept through Hollywood like a tidal wave, portraying its heroes or villains (or both) as (usually) ex IRA members looking for revenge, redemption or just plain old escape from a life fighting for “The Cause”, presumably the liberation of Ireland from the nasty clutches of The British Royal Family (the most evil of any real life villains no matter how many different ways that you cut it). One of the better entries in that sweepstakes was this 1994 release set in and filmed almost entirely on location in the city of Boston, itself sort of a Shangri La for the Irish people to escape from the old country and become drunken barflies for the rest of eternity. Jeff Bridges plays Liam McGivney, a formerly militant IRA bomber and international fugitive who sneaks into the country via The Boston Harbor and with the help of his retired Boston PD uncle (Lloyd Bridges) assumes a new identity and even joins the Boston Police as well, working his way into a choice position on The Boston PD Bomb Squad under a ridiculously fake alter ego (“Jimmy Dove”) as he uses his vast prior experience with explosives once used to vaporize innocent British civilians to now disarm and neutralize various devices being placed around the city by any number of misfits and nutcases, including his opening gambit, rescuing a cute girl whose virgin stalker has rigged a bomb up to her before blowing his own brains out for knowing that he will never have her before Bridges walks in with a little swagger, flirts with the terrified girl, and saves her life in no time so that they can walk out together and the papers can again carry the story of how the heroic “Jimmy Dove” has saved more innocent lives yet again. The problem is that Bridges is really the only actual member of The Boston PD Bomb Squad who is actually CAPABLE of disarming a bomb as the others engage in slapstick buffoonery that usually gets themselves or others killed unless (best case scenario) they can pull Bridges away on his day off from his stepdaughter’s birthday party to save the day when they clearly cannot (one member of the team even refuses to step into the building where the bomb actually is, frozen in fear and cowardice). But a bigger problem is on the horizon: Bridges’ cousin and former IRA compatriot (Tommy Lee Jones) has just escaped from the extra fortified secret prison where IRA members are sent to rot and does he have a chip on his shoulder, since the botched IRA bomb attack that caused him to be sent up not only killed his little sister, but also afforded Bridges’ Liam the opportunity amidst the chaos to escape into America and start a new life while he rotted away for years behind bars. Tommy Lee makes it into Boston as well, determined to blend in and become a drunk and forgotten fly on the wall until he sees his estranged cousin on the TV being celebrated as The Hero Of Boston, so he starts gathering up bomb making materials and goes back to work with bloody revenge on the brain. Tommy Lee correctly ascertains that the other bomb squad members are completely incompetent next to his cousin, and so he builds bombs that actually targets THEM with pinpoint accuracy, erasing Bridges’ friends and building up a psychological attack that he intends to climax by blowing up Liam’s newfound American wife and stepdaughter. Jones is an absolute hoot as the Irish mad bomber, dancing around to U2 music and lovingly building his bombs as if they were his children and Bridges as the tortured hero trying to work his way around catching his prey without giving away his true identity to the authorities straddles the line between still being a hero without his own history of bloodshed being revealed in another subtle yet powerful performance on his part. The only major drawback is in Forest Whitaker being miscast as the hotshot rookie (in his 40s) who joins the Squad only to promptly get one of his own team members killed on his first day on the job due to poor judgment. Whitaker is unusually passive playing a character who is described as being “cocky” by the others even as he fulfills his character’s purpose of piecing together the connections between Tommy Lee’s crazy man (who even sends the team members videos taunting “Liam” even as nobody except Liam himself even knows who he’s referring to) and the resident hero of the team in Bridges. Whitaker even openly admits that he took the job for the glory of being a hero while Bridges and his exploits at the end of the day remain a form of absolution for him from his sins. But the central conflict at hand (and the very real possibility that Tommy Lee himself could have been a heroic Bomb Squad member if he had made it out of Ireland earlier) which depicts Jones’ motivations as being revenge on a traitor to The Cause even while it is heavily implied that Tommy Lee himself had little use for IRA politics and just enjoyed the sight of one of his bombs going off as buildings burned and people died is enough to drive this narrative into one of heavy dramatic weight with several highlights including a huge explosion in Boston’s Copley Square where two other Keystone Kops on the team are vaporized before Bridges has a chance to huddle up with them for some sound advice on how not to set off a bomb when you’re supposed to disarm it. At one point during the final confrontation, Bridges even admits to Tommy Lee that the two of them are both better off going up together in a blaze of glory only for his former comrade to gleefully tell him that the big boom is being reserved for his new wife and stepdaughter instead because that happens to be a more ideal revenge. And so it continues, the wave of Irish Terrorist movies of that era where the lines of ambiguity between good and evil are clearly drawn enough to keep audiences on the edge of their seats…
8/10