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Great Film overall

Better Late Then Never

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

What a moving experience watching this movie. You get a great idea of the troubles Northern Ireland went through, and how it affected England itself and Northern Ireland as well.You also get a glimpse of how it affected families of the dead and what they had to go through just to get recognition for these bombings. Gerard McSorley was superb in this film. It was almost surreal how good this man was in this film. Overall, this had to be the greatest film I have ever seen. And I was only 14 when I saw this film (15 at this moment) and I'm still touched by this movie.I recommend this movie to everyone not only interested in Northern Ireland and the troubles, but for someone who wants to see a moving, touching, and amazing movie.

First there was "Bloody Sunday" and then there was "Omagh" - in between, there was thirty years of bloodletting that left thousands dead and many thousands more scarred physically and mentally. This is (or was?) "The Troubles".This is a quiet movie - of quiet desperation. The people of Omagh had survived and were going about their lives. The killers came and tore them apart - literally. The ones left behind looked for help - none was to be found. Their loved ones had been taken and they wanted closure. Their guardians failed them.The movie recounts the worst of the atrocities to have occurred in Northern Ireland over the years when a group of self-righteous hoodlums detonate a bomb in the center of a busy market town - Omagh. Most of the movie recounts the efforts of the families of the dead and injured to seek justice for the slain. They are still looking!

Fortunately I had the opportunity to see this film in Mexico. Its powerful recreation of an actual event was underscored by its sympathetic portrayal of everyday life in Northern Ireland. I was impressed that the violence on screen was limited to the explosion. The sequencing of the movie was outstanding, beginning with the assassins driving through the hills to Omagh, shifting to a father and son working together in the town, and then into the center of the town itself. Although the locale was one small town, of course its theme applies to all too many parts of the world these days. One interesting detail is that the faces looked familiar but that isn't surprising because many Americans are descended from the Scotch-Irish who settled in Northern Ireland.

OMAGH Aspect ratio: 1.78:1Sound format: Dolby DigitalUnlike its voracious American counterpart, British TV is generally reticent about dramatizing true-life crimes and atrocities, fearful of causing public offence and generating protest in self-righteous tabloid newspapers. Writer-director Paul Greengrass (THE BOURNE SUPREMACY) has been negotiating this delicate minefield since 1994, producing some of the most compelling works in British TV history (including "Bloody Sunday" and THE MURDER OF STEPHEN LAWRENCE). And while he didn't direct OMAGH - an account of the search for justice following the Real IRA car bomb which exploded in the Irish market town of Omagh in August 1998 - his style is writ large over the entire production. Co-written by Greengrass and Guy Hibbert (SHOT THROUGH THE HEART), the film was directed by Pete Travis, a relative newcomer who distinguished himself in 2003 with his acclaimed TV drama HENRY VIII.OMAGH focuses on Michael Gallagher (veteran actor Gerard McSorley), a quiet mechanic thrust into the media spotlight following his decision to pursue the shadowy figures who murdered his 21 year old son Aiden (along with so many others) on that dreadful afternoon. From the outset, the movie unspools with documentary precision, using hand-held cameras to enhance the sense of realism: The principal 'characters' are introduced in piecemeal fashion, via quick cuts from one scene to the next, but there's very little specific dialogue in the build-up to the explosion, in which 29 people died and hundreds were injured (primarily because the terrorist's vaguely worded tip-off led police to guide people directly into the bomb's immediate orbit), and the aftermath is reproduced in vivid detail. These difficult scenes are as sordid as they are necessary - the victims' relatives insisted on it - and the widespread grief which followed this appalling incident is depicted through the experiences of the remaining Gallagher family. McSorley's subsequent quest for justice leads him into contact with a wide variety of players, everyone from low-level police informants to some of Ireland's most prominent figures, only to find himself stonewalled by the politics of compromise. To date, no one has been tried for the Omagh bombing.Respectful, honest and unemotional, this painful reminder of recent history simply records events as they occurred, without affectation or sensationalism. The acting is *peerless*, with McSorley a quiet tower of strength in the central role, matched every step of the way by Michèle Forbes as his distraught wife, and Brenda Fricker as police ombudsman Nuala O'Loan whose investigation into the Omagh inquiry uncovered a catalogue of errors and deceit. Campaigning television at its very best.