Jim Sturgess takes on role as IRA informer in Fifty Dead Men Walking
Martin McGartland’s story is a riveting one. Where he was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s as a stone-throwing youth in the “Beirut” of nationalist west Belfast, the IRA were local heroes. He was not so sure. “Far from defending Catholics, it seemed that the IRA’s first duty was to wound, injure, maim and hurt Catholic teenagers,” McGartland wrote later, in response to the punishment squads that ran the estates. “The older I became, the more their actions angered me, driving me away from the republican cause.”
As a known petty crook and opportunist, running one step ahead of a kneecapping, McGartland was easily tapped up by the security services for info on suspected recruits. Later, after a personal epiphany over the Enniskillen bombing in which he rejected the notion of the armed struggle, he turned all-out informer. Infiltrating the IRA, McGartland worked from the inside — a traitor to his kind, a reviled “tout”, facing a hell on earth if exposed. To the Special Branch, meanwhile, he was “Agent Carol”, one of the most valuable spies on its payroll, his intelligence used to thwart numerous paramilitary operations. Inevitably, his mission would be compromised. In 1991, after two years embedded, McGartland was captured. Facing execution, he miraculously escaped and began a new life, under an assumed identity, in England.
McGartland wrote about his experiences in his 1997 autobiography, Fifty Dead Men Walking — the title a reference to the number of lives he is attributed with having saved. And now comes the film version. An Anglo-Canadian production, it’s a powerful ticking-clock thriller, a tale of life on a knife edge, of a man conflicted over loyalty to his community and the compulsion to do the right thing. Of note, it features a remarkable performance by Jim Sturgess as McGartland, clinging to his sole fraying lifeline: the one to his handler (Sir Ben Kingsley), whom he can contact only through the arcane means of calls from public phone boxes...
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As a known petty crook and opportunist, running one step ahead of a kneecapping, McGartland was easily tapped up by the security services for info on suspected recruits. Later, after a personal epiphany over the Enniskillen bombing in which he rejected the notion of the armed struggle, he turned all-out informer. Infiltrating the IRA, McGartland worked from the inside — a traitor to his kind, a reviled “tout”, facing a hell on earth if exposed. To the Special Branch, meanwhile, he was “Agent Carol”, one of the most valuable spies on its payroll, his intelligence used to thwart numerous paramilitary operations. Inevitably, his mission would be compromised. In 1991, after two years embedded, McGartland was captured. Facing execution, he miraculously escaped and began a new life, under an assumed identity, in England.
McGartland wrote about his experiences in his 1997 autobiography, Fifty Dead Men Walking — the title a reference to the number of lives he is attributed with having saved. And now comes the film version. An Anglo-Canadian production, it’s a powerful ticking-clock thriller, a tale of life on a knife edge, of a man conflicted over loyalty to his community and the compulsion to do the right thing. Of note, it features a remarkable performance by Jim Sturgess as McGartland, clinging to his sole fraying lifeline: the one to his handler (Sir Ben Kingsley), whom he can contact only through the arcane means of calls from public phone boxes...