Review of the film “The Last Mercenary” by Robert Lorenz

In theaters: “The Last Mercenary” (In the Land Of Saints and Sinners) by Robert Lorenz with Liam “Schindler” Neeson in the title role. Marveled at the harsh morals and harsh beauty of deep Ireland Mikhail Trofimenkov.

No, something is definitely wrong with Ireland. Whatever you grab, they have everything last. Just at the end of December, “The Last Gunman” was released on Russian screens. Terry Loan makes a stoic and tear-jerking ballad about a 90-year-old Normandy landing veteran who escapes from a nursing home to attend the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Now the same Terry Loan wrote the script for “The Last Mercenary.”

It doesn’t really matter that the film’s original title, “In the Land of Saints and Sinners,” sounds much more poetic. Both films are about the last Irish veterans of World War II. More precisely, about the options for their post-war destinies.

Artie from The Last Gunman led a pretty decent life after the war. But Finbar (Liam Neeson), after the death of his wife, chose the difficult but necessary profession of an assassin. Pretending in his peaceful incarnation as a bookseller, a connoisseur of Swift and Dostoevsky. His fellow soldier became a policeman, which did not stop his friends from remembering bygone days and battles where they fought together.

Perhaps, at the end of their lives, they, too, like Artie, will end up in a nursing home, but for now it is a cheerful 1974, almost the peak of the bloody “riots,” as they are officially called in the UK. Or simply put, the long-term civil war of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) for the separation of Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and, accordingly, its annexation to Ireland. The IRA terrorists represented the Catholic community, while their opponents, no less brutal in their means, represented the Protestant community.

From certain angles, The Last Mercenary appears to be a tourism infomercial focusing on Ireland. The red brick of Belfast, the emerald green of the meadows, the harsh blue of the waves and the yellow shorts of football players. The cypress trees that Finbar tenderly plants over each burial in his personal cemetery: what can you do, there is a shortage of forests in Ireland.

Voiced matrons, big-headed cats, an Afro-Irishman playing a violin in the only pub in the town of Donnecol. Irish stew, Guinness, good single malt whiskey. Policemen in vests, bombs in briefcases. Red-haired strangers, each of whom has the following written on their faces: “We are bombers. We are bombers, we are preparing an assassination attempt.”

In short, all this splendor would have continued forever – Finbar would have been shooting at the “clients” lying in the trunk of his car with his trusty rifle, the obese murder dispatcher would have been handing out “orders” – if strangers had not shown up in Donnecol.

Well, not exactly strangers, of course. The brother of the wife of the late brother of a local barmaid – perhaps the genealogy is more complicated, but cannot be discerned from the film – dragged a whole crowd of fanatical killers with him into the quiet abode of a professional killer. In other words, IRA militants. Something went wrong there in Belfast: they tried their best, but it turned out as always. Apparently, they blew up some police agent or Protestant activist, and killed three children.

Commanding the militants on the run, which makes hopeless for a more or less amicable resolution of the conflict between local and alien killers, is the hysterical Dory (Kerry Condon). Compared to her, any Socialist Revolutionary terrorist of the 1910s, up to Maria Spiridonova or Irina Kakhovskaya, will seem like an angel of goodness and mercy. She treats the male fighters assisting her in such a way that it’s time to talk about “sexualized violence.” In their company is also a guy vaguely suspected of pedophilic tendencies, but he won’t get too much screen time.

Finbar’s assistant, however, also does not inspire much confidence. A guy with a mustache and a leather jacket, a lover of old rock and roll and elegant murders. Once he was offered to drown a man, and he drowned him. My only regret is that I sold it on the cheap. It’s different from the bloody ideological fighters for the freedom of Ireland, who do not derive any benefit from their struggle.

And this is where the main question for “The Last Mercenary” arises. There are plenty of sinners here, but there is a shortage of saints. Why the hell are we supposed to sympathize with the main character? Because he’s a World War II veteran? Because you read Crime and Punishment? Because he loves cats and children? Because he modestly hides his feelings for his neighbor? Because he is finally planting cypress trees?

Oh yes, I forgot. We’re supposed to love this ghoul because he’s played by Liam Neeson, and that’s about it.