Film
Michael Collins
Neil Jordan's 1996 biopic follows Michael Collins, the Irish revolutionary who shaped modern Irish independence but became trapped between pragmatism and ideology. It's a sharp political thriller wrapped in historical drama, with the texture of a Seventies procedural. For those drawn to ambitious men making impossible choices, and to 20th-century history told with genuine narrative drive.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you want a sprawling political history where backroom negotiations carry as much tension as the gunfights, and you enjoy watching a complicated man argue with his own side.
Skip it if you need taut, linear plotting, since it is long, talky and crowded with factions that can blur together.
What it asks of you: At 132 minutes, its pace is measured, its rooms full of talk as much as its battles, and its mood grave rather than light.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
In the Name of the Father1993
Daniel Day-Lewis in a true-crime political thriller about wrongful imprisonment in Northern Ireland. Shares Collins's focus on individual conscience colliding with state machinery, with equal emotional intensity and a knockout performance.
But It's bleak and angry, with less of the romantic sweep you might expect. The courtroom pacing can feel repetitive if procedural drama leaves you cold.
The Wind That Shakes the Barley2006
Ken Loach's devastating account of the Irish War of Independence and civil war, told through ordinary soldiers. It captures the same historical moment but from ground level, with Loach's documentary eye and moral clarity.
But It's a slow burn with minimal musical accompaniment, and the politics are relentless. Some find Loach's didacticism heavy-handed.
Barry Lyndon1975
Kubrick's baroque, picaresque biography of an Irish rogue surviving 18th-century chaos. Like Collins, it's about an ambitious Irish man navigating empires and revolutions, but filtered through Kubrick's cold, satirical lens and shot like a series of Rembrandt paintings.
But It's two hours 50 minutes and deliberately artificial in composition. The slowness is the point, but it's not everyone's point.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Michael Collins
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Brooklyn2015
Both explore Irishness as something contested and chosen. Collins fought to define Ireland from outside; Eilis must decide what Ireland means when she's left it behind.
John Crowley's film follows an Irish woman's journey between two countries and two identities. Superficially a love story, but it's really about chosen exile and the cost of becoming who you need to be—the emotional inverse of Collins's tragedy.
But It's quiet, romantic, and deeply interior. If you want ideology and action, this is all feeling and longing.
More like this (6)
Street Food: Latin America2020
A gritty Irish crime thriller centered on political corruption and the Troubles' legacy. It has Collins's understanding of how personal ambition and national struggle become inseparable.
But It's modern and contemporary, so if you want historical texture and period detail, this won't deliver it.
The Master2012
Paul Thomas Anderson's Scientology allegory, but really about charisma, ideology, and two men in a power struggle. Like Collins, it examines how conviction can mask manipulation, and how followers attach meaning to broken men.
But It's abstract and deliberately frustrating. If you want clarity and narrative resolution, PTA will withhold both from you.
Hunger2008
Steve McQueen's film about the IRA hunger strikes in Long Kesh prison. Raw, uncompromising account of conviction and suffering. Completes the Irish political violence picture Collins begins.
But It's extremely graphic and emotionally brutal. The ending is not a relief; it's a devastation.
The Quiet Girl2022
Irish-language film set in 1930s rural Ireland. It's visually gorgeous and psychologically intricate, capturing the texture of Irish life in the period Collins's revolution left behind.
But It's deliberately paced and intimate rather than historical. The story is small and personal, which some find precious.
The Act of Killing2012
Both examine how revolutionary violence and state violence blur, and how men rationalize becoming killers in service of a cause they've convinced themselves is just.
Documentary where perpetrators of Indonesian genocide restage their murders. Like Collins, it's about charismatic men, power, complicity, and the stories we tell ourselves about violence. Extraordinary and hideous.
But It's a documentary, not narrative film. Watching men celebrate atrocity is deliberately nauseating and hard to endure.
The Emigrants1971
Both films ask what kind of person survives upheaval, and what they become in the process. Collins is a revolutionary among power; the Emigrants are people remade by displacement.
Jan Troell's four-hour Swedish epic about a family leaving poverty for 19th-century Minnesota. It's a historical film about survival and ambition that moves with the scope of Collins but dwells on ordinary lives at the periphery of history.
But It's extremely long, meditative, and its subject is exodus rather than action. Some find it achingly slow, which is precisely what makes it work.
People
Cast
Liam NeesonMichael Collins
Aidan QuinnHarry Roland
Stephen ReaNed Broy
Alan RickmanEamon de Valera
Julia RobertsKitty Kiernan
Ian HartJoe O'Reilly
Brendan GleesonLiam Tobin
Stuart GrahamTom Cullen
Sean McGinleySmith
Gerard McSorleyCathal Brugha
Jonathan Rhys MeyersCollin's Assassin
Charles DanceSoames
Directing
- Neil JordanDirector
Writing
- Neil JordanWriter
Production
- Gillian ReynoldsCasting
- Susie FiggisCasting
- Redmond MorrisCo-Producer
- Stephen WoolleyProducer
- Lynn GoldmanProduction Supervisor
Recommended by
In the Name of the Father, Say Nothing, Some Mother's Son, Bobby Sands: 66 Days, The Boxer, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Omagh, Five Minutes of Heaven, Cal, Ascendancy, Sardar Udham, Shadow Dancer, The Outsider, The Gentle Gunman