For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Resurrection Man focuses on sectarian violence in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Concentrating on what sort of characters are involved in this lifestyle and their relationships, but doesn't really go into much detail why. Which makes the film into a more stereotypical "two gangs battling" film, focusing mainly on the relationships between the members of the protestant gang, and making it all very stylish. This is the film's main flaw, it's feels like you've seen it before, it has been done before and better by others. That said, Resurrection Man has some good performances and a decent soundtrack, but on the whole, unless any of the plot lines are of interest to you personally, you might be better off watching some of the established "classics" of the genre that are fairly well known.

Making a film about any conflict is ambitious but making one during a conflict is even more so. This film tactfully tackles the story of the Shankill Butchers a gang that mindlessly slaughtered innocent civilians and got away with it because it was during the Troubles. Strong performances from O'Rawe and Fricker in creating authentic Belfast dialogue. Townsend is sensational as as Victor and Holmes music is as good as its gets - long love SugarSweet...! If this production had the same budget as Goodfellows I shudder to think how good it could have been. Open your mind and imagine what it was like to live in a western street in 1970 with the army running down it and bombs going off.

I guess this was as far as the filmmakers could go without actually calling Kelly Murphy. So instead of the audience being shown a film that could be called a true story, the events portrayed, however close to real life, take on an air of the surreal. The fact that there was a gang who did this sort of thing and a whole lot worse in the name of sectarian hatred is not made clear. Maybe they thought worldwide audiences would struggle with this concept, and introduced some kind of psychopathic blood lust to make the whole thing more believable. As it is, watching this film, and having read Martin Dillon's excellent book, I was left feeling frustrated, that an opportunity to portray the actual events was badly missed, being dumped into a crypto-fascist mishmash of conflicting motives. Living in N. Ireland, we know that there were and are people who could do this sort of thing and justify it on religious grounds..the film just isn't brave enough to say this, and so we are left with this psycho loner character that is frankly laughable. the gang weren't held in some kind of thrall by this psycho, acting against their will, they actually killed while Murphy was in prison, to make him look innocent. Townsend does what he was asked to do, it's just a pity he wasn't asked to do the right thing.

Stylishly shot, but predictable, woefully under-developed script with patchy performances other than the compelling lead male actor. Seems to believe it's about violence, but incoherent story and directorial approach to the ultra violence the film purports to explore, results in triple X rated pop video. Not just bad, but stupid on quite a deep level.