Purely Joyful Movie!

Brilliant and touching

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

This film worked quite well as a comedy, with a notorious criminal making fools out of the Gardai. As such, I would have given it 7 or 8 out of 10. Kevin Spacey is always worth watching, as is David Kelly, who had a cameo role as the priest. However I have a couple of reservations.Firstly, you can only go so far with comedies on this subject: so you have to ignore the torture and violence scenes. You could have done an "A-Team" where nobody gets hurt, but since this is loosely based on a real life criminal, that would have been hypocritical.Secondly, I have never in my entire born days heard such appalling Dublin accents. I had to laugh when I discovered that the dialogue coach was called Brendan Gunn - he should have been fired instead of all the other guns that were fired on screen. Spacey's accent never got past Rockall. And he was far from being alone in this respect. Casting directors should know better.Dublin accents (north or south of the Liffey) are not easy, even for Cork or Belfast people, but for good examples of it being done well, see Kate Hudson in "About Adam".However I have to admit that I did quite enjoy the film.Finally for examples of accents bad enough to spoil films, try Michael Caine in Hurry Sundown and Sean Connery in The Molly Maguires or anything else for that matter. Except that Connery always gets away with it.

"Ordinary Decent Criminal" is sort of based on the exploits of Martin Cahill, already the subject of John Boorman's 1998 film "The General". Cahill had a rough upbringing in a slum area and graduated from petty crime to armed robbery with honours. He justified his criminal career by pointing out his poor background at every opportunity. This is a common excuse for criminals that conveniently overlooks the thousands of slum-dwellers who don't turn to robbing post offices and selling guns in order to make ends meet. Cahill made fools of the police and local authorities, not to mention the IRA, which earned him a sort of "Folk Hero" status as well as making him many enemies. However, he was basically an amoral, self-serving thief.My primary problem with "ODC" is that the protagonist is made out to be a lovable Irish rogue. Kevin Spacey does a good job portraying Michael Lynch with a blend of oily charm and quiet menace, but the character is too amoral and selfish to be seen as any sort of hero, even an anti-hero. The film is well shot and well acted by a fine cast, but what lets it down is the script. Writer Gerard Stembridge can't make up his mind; is he writing an Irish "Lock Stock" or a grittier treatment of Martin Cahill's thieving career? That's the problem when a writer bases his central character on a real person. It's also unfortunate that "ODC" followed the cinema release of John Boorman's "The General", which was a more accurate portrayal of Martin Cahill's story. Cahill was a cunning thief who knew the value of good publicity, so it's not surprising that his exploits got the movie treatment.What IS surprising is that a studio was prepared to take Cahill's story and give it a happy Hollywood-style ending. Kevin Spacey's charismatic-twinkly-bigamist-thief Michael Lynch gets to ride off into anonymity on his motorcycle in "ODC". In the real world, Martin Cahill was executed by the IRA, just to prove that no-one makes fools of an out-dated, sectarian and corrupt para-military organisation and gets away with it. The real Cahill would never have walked away from his notoriety because it bolstered his "Man of The People" self-image. Having Michael Lynch give up everything to avoid death in "ODC" is a cop-out ending to a weak and shallow movie.

Kevin Spacey is my favorite actor of all time, he is without a doubt on other's lists as well when it comes to great actors. He even pulled off a good Irish accent in Ordinary Decent Criminal as well. But Kevin Spacey, as a Mafia leader? Or even a burglar? I'm not so sure he could go that far. The movie to me just didn't make any sense and the some of the story just didn't feel solved to me.I know once again that IMDb is going to make me write ten more lines. But I'm not so sure on what I could say about this movie because I am still trying to figure it out. Silly, isn't it? But I'm pretty sure that more than a few of you IMDb users have been in the same predicament as I am in right now where you just want to say a line or two about a movie, but now you have to do ten lines? Wow, that should do it. :D 3/10

After seeing "Ordinary Decent Criminal" I'm starting to wonder if there are still other genres of movies being made in the UK. Since their success with movies like "Snatch", "Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels" and of course the best one of them all "Trainspotting", I'm getting the feeling that almost all movies coming from the UK are about criminals. I guess I can only name a couple of movies in which the emphasis lies on another subject. However, that doesn't mean that I can't enjoy them of course. Certainly when you get a nice example like this one, I must say that I keep having fun with it.Dublin's most notorious criminal, Michael Lynch, has become a hero to the working class inhabitants of the city, but is hated by the entire police force because they can't catch him. When he isn't playing the loving husband of a happy family with his children and his two wives, the two sisters Christine and Lisa, he is busy plotting a new heist. But the loot isn't the only thing that interests him, he wants to give away a nice spectacle as well. Gradually a showdown between his gang and the police force is getting inevitable...What I like about this kind of movies is the typical good robber / bad cop situation. We are supposed to hate criminals and to like the men in blue, but in this kind of movies, you can only support the criminals in their acts and hope that they never get caught. That's of course thanks to the humor that is used. If it hadn't been for all the laughs that they provide, you wouldn't like them all that much. But that's not the only reason why I like this movie. What's also good about it is that the acting is more than OK. I know that many people have pointed out that they hated Kevin Spacey's and Linda Fiorentino's accents, but personally I didn't have too much problems with it. For once I was able to see past that and enjoyed both actors' performances. In my opinion Fiorentino even deserved a bigger role.Is this a perfect movie then? No, certainly not. The story for instance has been done before, I would say a couple of times at least, and all originality has gone. But again, I could see past it. This movie offered me plenty of laughs, I was entertained from the beginning until the end and I liked what I saw. I give this movie a rating of 7.5/10.