A new film about Irish godfather Martin Cahill is angering those who suffered from his crimes

By JULIE K.L. DAM

he General opens and closes with the scene of the 1994 murder of its title character, the Dublin crime boss Martin Cahill. The camera follows Cahill closely as he saunters out of his house and gets into his car. It catches his face as he seems to smile at the I.R.A. assassin approaching with a gun. After bullets shatter the car window the camera lingers over his lifeless body.

It was not quite like that in reality. Cahill was as obsessed with hiding his face from the cameras as he was with evading the police--only blurry images of him were ever published in his lifetime. This sense of mystery--and the brazen jewelry store, bank and art robberies and cat burglaries with which he taunted the authorities--made him into an Irish legend. Based on a book by crime reporter Paul Williams, The General builds on that legend, portraying Cahill as that cinematic staple, the lovable rogue. At Cannes, where the film won him the prize for best director, John Boorman went so far as to call Cahill a "Celtic chieftain" because of his hatred of all forms of authority. This largely sympathetic depiction has provoked sharp debate in Ireland, where those who were at the receiving end of Cahill's crimes are denouncing the film's critical success.

"The mythical Celtic stuff is nonsense. [The filmmakers] are in some Celtic twilight mist of their own," says James Donovan, a forensic scientist who testified against Cahill several times and suffered severe injuries in a car bomb blast when he was scheduled to present evidence linking Cahill to an armed robbery in a 1982 trial. Donovan still suffers from the aftermath of the blast--he faces the prospect of losing his left leg because of poorly-healed wounds, and he has developed cataracts from shards of metal that blew into his eyes. Cahill's connection to the blast is assumed, and the episode is depicted in the movie. "Nobody is denying that Cahill committed crime, and yet there is a feeling that there's an attempt to excuse it, as if it were fun," Donovan says angrily. "People say there are humorous parts in the film, but my experience of his humor was his laughter that day as he came down the steps of the court and the following morning the bomb went off in my car."

The movie shows Cahill merrily thwarting the authorities one moment and giving out food and supplies to his neighbors the next. Motivation for his antisocial behavior is provided by flashbacks to a childhood of institutional poverty and abuse by priests. It is an image of romance and Robin Hood that annoys police officers who dealt with the real Cahill. "I certainly wouldn't have seen Cahill as a Robin Hood figure," says Eamonn Doherty, who as head of the Irish police force set up the Tango Squad that placed Cahill under close 24-hour surveillance. "He only ever did things for himself, not for anyone else." Cahill amassed a million-dollar fortune through his crimes, and still every week he left his comfortable home--paid for in cash--to collect unemployment benefits.

"He was a fascinating man, an extremely entertaining character, but it is a balanced picture," director Boorman insists. "I was very careful about this in writing the film." To be fair, the film is indeed far from mere hagiography; it does not gloss over Cahill's brutality or foibles. In one horrific scene, Cahill nails a cohort's hand to a snooker table when he mistakenly thinks the man has stolen from him--although in a later scene they joke about the incident, no hard feelings. His peculiar family life is also addressed: he had children with both his childhood-sweetheart wife and her sister.

What most draws the audience to Cahill's character is an engaging performance by Brendan Gleeson, until now best known as Mel Gibson's sidekick in Braveheart. His soft, boyish features, which by most accounts bear a striking resemblance to Cahill's, can depict glee, pain, anger, disappointment--but they never seem harsh, despite the starkness of the black-and-white film. The character of the police inspector, played by Jon Voight, presents the possibility of a dramatic foil who can draw some sympathy away from Cahill. But the policeman's feelings about his nemesis too often veer toward grudging respect. It is an attitude the viewer is also compelled to adopt, however uneasily.

Had Martin Cahill not been a real man who committed real crimes upon real victims, The General could be appreciated simply as intriguing film fare, if at times overly sentimental. The moviegoers in Ireland who have taken The General to the top of the box-office list have apparently come to terms with the mixed feelings the film evokes. "It was a movie, not a documentary," says Dubliner Frank Long, 26. Says Aileen Frehill, 20, of Galway: "He is portrayed as a hero, but I have no problem with that. We all know the truth." The maimed Donovan--and the others who suffered from Cahill's crimes--might disagree.

--With reporting by Tony Connelly/Dublin

--With Reporting by Tony Connelly /Dublin