A PRAYER FOR THE DYING (1987) *1/2 Jack Higgins' novel is apparently predicated on the most absurd falsehoods, and so the film is utterly destroyed before it can even get going. Oh, yeah, sure Mickey Rourke is a badass IRA guy who's killed all these people and survived on his wits for years, but he keeps walking up to armed and professional murderers in deserted parking lots for the sole purpose of voicing complaints. Oh, yes, it makes perfect sense that the great mafia kingpin (Alan Bates) works in a secluded mortuary as a day job, everyone knows that criminal empires just run themselves. And, sure, Bates' buddy follows around hit men to see that their work goes off well, risking arrest or worse for no reason other than employee evaluation. Sure, sure the sanctity of the confessional stretches to the ends of the earth, so that priests can never testify about anything relating to anyone who has ever confessed...Higgins would have you believe that a priest who witnesses a murder, in public, isn't allowed to discuss it with the police. Higgins insults our intelligence, in major ways, about every ten minutes. Which is too bad, because it's an interesting cast. Rourke's accent isn't bad, but he still doesn't seem at all Irish. He's definitely got the terrorist in him, but it comes out more in real life interviews than the portrayal of this film. I like Alan Bates a lot, but his character is so ridiculous that no one could have got it going on any level other than farce. Liam Neeson probably comes off the best, but he's not all that good either. Of course there have to be women, and they collectively could be best utilized in a film entitled Invasion of the Blandly Dressed Dye-Blond Bimbos. So there are some very usable parts, but they're all, like the unusable ones, wasted. They would have either had to throw out the script or, even better, openly mock it, in order to even begin to realize the inherent potential of the existential situation. They didn't, they lose. They only thing you can get out of the film is that you wouldn't like Higgins: he has no idea what he's talking about, he either didn't do any research, didn't understand it, or threw it out; he's incompetent, he creates scenes so stupid that you feel bad even laughing at him, and then he tries to cover it up by going grotesque.
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