A Prayer for the Dying
All actors and roles (10)
All team (68)
Short description
Martin Fallon is an IRA man who wants out. After a job goes wrong and civilians are killed, he leaves Ireland for London, hoping to disappear under a new identity. His former comrades want him punished, the police are after him, and the only person who can supply the passport and money he needs is a gangster, Jack Meehan, who demands one more killing as payment. Fallon carries it out, but a Catholic priest, Father Michael Da Costa, witnesses the murder and refuses to break the seal of the confessional, placing them both in danger.
Mike Hodges directed the film, his fifth feature, arriving between Flash Gordon and Black Rainbow. The screenplay is by Edmund Ward and Martin Lynch, and Peter Snell produced. Mickey Rourke plays Fallon, with Bob Hoskins as the priest, Alan Bates as Meehan, and Sammi Davis, Christopher Fulford and Liam Neeson in supporting roles. It runs 107 minutes.
On a budget of roughly six million dollars, the film returned about one million worldwide. On IMDb-style audience polling represented by TMDB it holds 5.9 out of 10 from 119 votes, while the critics' rating stands at 4.9 out of 10 from 12 reviews, so audiences and critics were not far apart in their assessment.
What's left behind the scenes
- Director Mike Hodges and Mickey Rourke (who played the role of Martin) publicly disowned the theatrical version of the film. Enraged by creative differences with the producers, Hodges tried to have his name removed from the credits entirely. Rourke was dissatisfied that the filming focused on action rather than the drama of the events depicted in the movie, and during filming, he openly claimed that Chuck Norris should have been cast in the role instead of him.
- As Tony Jornsaw wrote in his 2008 book 'Made in Yorkshire', a version of the film planned for the 1970s was intended to be shot in Leeds, where the action of Jack Higgins' 1973 novel (credited as one of the screenwriters, real name Harry Patterson), which served as the literary source for the script, takes place. Lee Marvin was intended to star in the film, with Edward Dimitriek serving as director and screenwriter. Jornsaw's book included photographs of Marvin and Dimitriek in Leeds while scouting locations for the shoot.
- Preparing for the role of an Irish Republican Army activist, Mickey Rourke spent time with actual members of the IRA.
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