Ordinary Decent Criminal
All team (47)
Short description
Michael Lynch is a Dublin gang leader whose robberies are carried out with such style that the public admires him while the police struggle to make anything stick. He has two wives, Christine and Lisa, a taste for showmanship and a habit of taunting the authorities. Detective Noel Quigley becomes determined to put him away, and the pressure builds when Lynch steals a painting by Caravaggio that cannot be sold.
The film is a crime comedy directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan from a screenplay by Gerard Stembridge, produced by Jonathan Cavendish. Kevin Spacey plays Michael Lynch, with Linda Fiorentino and Helen Baxendale as his two wives, Peter Mullan as his associate Stevie, Stephen Dillane as Quigley and Colin Farrell as Alec. It runs 93 minutes and was released in January 2000, the first of three features O'Sullivan has directed.
On IMDb the film holds a critics' rating of 3.7 out of 10 from seven reviews, while on TMDB it has a 6.2 out of 10 from 256 votes, a gap that suggests audiences responded more warmly than reviewers. It was made as a co-production between Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States.
What's left behind the scenes
- The story of the discovery of Caravaggio's (1571-1610) painting "The Kiss of Judas" (c. 1602), as recounted by Father Grogan in the film, actually happened. The painting is currently on display at the National Gallery of Ireland.
- Originally, the film was intended to be about Martin Cahill, nicknamed The General (1949-1994), a Dublin-born Irish criminal. However, the filmmakers learned that John Boorman was already making a film about Cahill, so the plot had to be rewritten. Some elements of the original concept still appear in the resulting film: when the protagonist tortures one of his gang members, suspecting him of 'ratting' (this scene is shown more realistically in Boorman's 'The General' from 1988); and when The General goes to an art gallery to steal paintings (in reality, The General did indeed rob the Russborough House museum); and the fact that his 'wives' were sisters.
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