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The Outsider (1980 film)
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Wikipedia article
'The Outsider' is a 1980 film thriller set largely in Belfast during The Troubles; it was the first film directed by Italian-American Tony Luraschi. The film is based on the book 'The Heritage of Michael Flaherty' by Colin Leinster, and details the fictional experience of an idealistic Irish-American who travels to Ireland and joins the IRA in the 1970s.
Luraschi, who had worked as an assistant director with Stanley Kramer and Roger Vadim, had never been to Ireland until 1976.
The company was unable to film in Northern Ireland, so instead made arrangement with a local residents' association to film the exterior scenes in the Dublin suburb of Ringsend.
Response
Reviews
* New York: "the film caused a minor scandal in London recently, where government officials were outraged at a scene that showed a British officer participating in the torture of an Irish prisoner."* "his skill at realistically conveying the terrible waste of the civil strife in Northern Ireland and the chilling day-to-day acceptance of violence as a way of life there. Unfortunately, the red-herring contrivances of his plot trivialize his powerful material."
* Stepan O'Fetchit... "At the other extreme, modern-dress movies like Tony Luraschi's 'The Outsider'... purport to present a real, contemporary Ireland while effectively reducing it to a traffic snarl-up of faceless ideologues wielding guns, balaclavas, and gritty one-liners."
* The Outsider (US-COLOR) "Thoughtful terrorism drama, starring the IRA. ... Lack of concession on the part of director-scripter Tony Luraschi to conventional thriller pacing makes the Paramount-financed production no easy moneyspinner."
Political reaction
The film was dropped from a 1979 London festival.References
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