ORDINARY DECENT CRIMINAL

THE STUDIO will probably make a mint on this one, depressing as it is to report - Ordinary Decent Criminal is, of course, a Hollywood-friendly account of the life and times of Martin 'The General' Cahill, and one which does a fairly efficient job of compressing the man's complex character into an easily digestible two-hour drama.

As pure cinema, the film compares unfavourably to John Boorman's elegant black-and-white 1998 mini-masterpiece The General (which will still stand up as a classic in ten years' time, but was much too esoteric for mainstream tastes) - but taken entirely on its own terms, it's a pretty entertaining yarn, if not one likely to remain in the memory for too long.

The film's single biggest failing, and one which will resonate more painfully with Irish audiences than anyone else, is the embarrassing ineptitude of the leads' Irish accents - Kevin Spacey and Linda Fiorentino are top-drawer actors, and I would generally be slow to criticise either of them, but they spend the duration of Ordinary Decent Criminal apparently attempting to outdo one another in a Worst Paddy Accent competition, on occasion sounding like a pair of Kerry pig-farmers attempting to flog their prize heifer.

It takes the native viewer at least half-an-hour to get used to the accents, by which time it should be just about possible to settle down and enjoy a film that's by no means as bad as the bulk of its recent reviews have seemed to suggest. Although the film cravenly opts out of admitting its subject - the Cahill figure is referred to throughout as 'Michael Lynch' - there is still more than enough raw material in the man's colourful life to sustain any black comedy, and most of the scenes should manage to raise a wry smile from anyone with a functioning funnybone.

Director Thaddaeus O'Sullivan (Nothing Personal) keeps the whole affair chugging along in solid if unremarkable fashion, and the Garda Siochana are portrayed as the most bungling, boneheaded shower of incompetents ever to pose as a police force. For this, if nothing else, Ordinary Decent Criminal is worth a look - but steel yourself for the accents before you go near it.

RATING: HHH