Baltimore (15)
Directed by Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor


 
 

AN English heiress turned revolutionary, the Provisional IRA and one of the largest art heists in history are at the centre of this gripping political crime thriller based on a remarkable true story that took place in the 1970s.  
 
Written and directed by Irish husband and wife filmmakers Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, the film portrays the events of April 26 1974 when the disinherited Rose Dugdale (Imogen Poots) and three IRA comrades (played by Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Lewis Brophy and Jackl Meade) staged a violent raid at Russborough House in Wicklow stealing 19 masterpieces. The armed gang demanded the repatriation of four IRA prisoners from England to Ireland in exchange for the paintings.  
 
The robbery, which was masterminded by Dugdale, is intercut with flashbacks of Dugdale’s youth which depicts how she slowly became radicalised when she went to Oxford University to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the age of 18. Rejecting her wealthy upbringing and incensed by the injustice of the Bloody Sunday massacre she joined the IRA’s armed struggle. “I am angry with this country and I am willing to do whatever it takes to put an end to this disgusting behaviour in Northern Ireland,” she states. 
 
Poots gives a magnetic and powerful performance as the angry, passionate and single-minded Dugdale who pretended to be a French tourist needing assistance to gain entry to Russborough House. But the audacious raid goes awry and the increasing tension takes a brutal turn that proves both spine-chilling and heart-stopping. 
 
The film does not glorify Dugdale, who was pregnant at the time, nor does it pass judgement even as it shows how far she was willing to go by declaring war on the patriarchy and the capitalist pigs, in addition to giving all her money away to revolutionary causes. It also concentrates on the raid and the days immediately afterwards when Dugdale and her accomplices were holed up in a remote cottage in West Cork. 
 
It is an extraordinary tale and portrait of a singular and privileged renegade.

Out in cinemas tomorrow.