A scant six hours after returning home from Martyrs we were back in line for a 9AM screening of Fifty Dead Men Walking (tiff) at the Ryerson. No, it wasn’t another horror flick. Basically it was a story about an informant inside the IRA in the late 80s and early 90s.

It wasn’t great, and it wasn’t really anything we hadn’t seen before, though it was based on a true story. And while I like Ben Kingsley most of the time, for some reason Jim Sturgess bugs the shit out of me. I can’t explain it. Just don’t like the guy.

Anyway, it’s a decent enough film, but I’m surprised it was a Gala (last night, in fact) given the fairly standard story. I guess being made by a Canadian director and having a Canadian connection — the real-life character played by Sturgess, on the run and in hiding, was shot and nearly killed somewhere in Canada in 1999 — was enough to put it on the red carpet.

C+

[tags]tiff, tiff08, fifty dead men walking[/tags]