The story is about a man named Michael Collins, one of Ireland's most controversial figures. It is the outlook that recounts the reality of this man who was leading a guerrilla war against the United Kingdom and helping negotiate the creation of a free Irish state at a time when it was the most difficult in the history of the country.
Be sure to watch "The Wind That Shakes The Barley" if you watch "Michael Collins"
Times (UK)
March 03, 2016
[Neeson] is superb as the principled, steely yet romantic action hero of Neil Jordan's film, which has been re-released for the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1916.
Intelligent, enormously accomplished and seriously problematic, Neil Jordan's ambitious account of the activities of arguably the central figure in Ireland's painful, bloody fight for independence from the British Empire has a great deal to offer...
eFilmCritic.com
July 18, 2008
Neil Jordan uses very broad and movie-ish strokes to paint his portrait of the busy, eponymous hero.
Jordan always had 6-foot-4 Liam Neeson in mind to play the man they called "the Big Fellow," and it's more than size that makes Neeson fit the part of a leader known for his "cloudburst temperament."
While the film is unflinching in its depiction of the brutality of both the English and the Irish, Jordan pointedly dissociates his hero from any actual ugliness.
There are pain and honor in [Neeson's] performance, and they constantly rise up to redeem a film that is less probing, less thoughtful than its director's claims and aspirations for it.
