Fifty Dead Men Walking

A few weeks ago, a friend from UK came to Istanbul for a visit. We had long talks about all sorts of stuff for the following few days, and at some point I asked him, so, what's all this about UK, I mean Scotland, Ireland, England etc, are they separate countries now or what? I, for years, personally did not feel the need to know about them any further than the Freedoooom! speech from so-called William Wallace (and I surely have read that Braveheart was not historically accurate), but there we were, I had a British right next to me, well-equipped with all sorts of historical, political and sociological information and he filled me in with all. Yet, the thing I remember most about our conversation was the final decision I reached of living in Scotland!

So tonight I watched Fifty Dead Men Walking, but with a little bit of a confusion at first and I ended up with some mixed feelings about the movie.

Fifty Dead Men Walking is a 2008 movie by Kari Skogland, based on the 1997 autobiography of the same name by Martin McGartland, starring Jim Sturgess (Martin McGartland) and Ben Kingsley (Fergus). It covers the period between 1987-1991, the period in which McGartland worked as an informant within the IRA. In the 80s, McGartland was a 20-something street hustler in Northern Ireland; IRA wanted to recruit him, and so did the British police. Since he did not approve of IRA, he decided to work with the British police, while becoming an official volunteer in the IRA, gaining the trust of top people within the organization, thus being donated with top-secret information which he handed in the British police, through Fergus. As the situation got more and more serious, it seems that McGartland and Fergus built a somewhat father-son relationship. However, it is obvious that there is no win-win situation in the end for nobody, and as the British decided to use him as a bait, he was finally discovered by IRA. After that point, the only person that McGarland could trust became Fergus, who arranged a new life for him and his girlfriend in Scotland, which he did not accept in order not to take his girlfriend, his son and his other child on the way, down with himself, doomed to an insecure life. He then ran alone to Canada, and he was found one day by an IRA hitman and was shot. It is known that he survived after the shooting and is still on the run.


It is not easy to make comments about a movie like this without the criticism of the story itself, for it is a real story and is related to many lives as well as many deaths, and, is a piece of a very recent history. It is almost thoroughly one-sided look at the events that took place as well as the identity of McGartland, however, that is a choice made by the director and there is no escape from it since it is based on McGartland's very own writing. Thus comes my mixed feelings about the film; it creates an almost heroic description of the man, whom even I could blame for many unpleasant events, but it also makes a very good character study and a thriller out of the whole story, for those who would prefer to see it that way. I believe that it is indeed possible to find the movie very successful giving the credit that it does create an ambience that there was this man, no matter what he did and if we approved or not, suffering from the consequences of his actions, never being able to see his family and his friends again, yet, a true justice for what he did, to his community.


Certainly, Martin McGartland was not the only one, acting as he did, or to blame for what happened, however, he did play an integral part. Yet, the movie, hearing the word 'terrorist' for so many times through its course, also makes you think of all the 'freedom fighters' or 'wars against terrorism', all around the world. My friend asked if we, humans, are ever to find the beauty of love and peace, and I replied, with all my pessimism, no; unfortunately, in this world, love and peace do not have any value, over money, over absolute power, over hatred.