Gaspari: Patriot Games and The Devil's Own

Patriot Games, and The Devil's Own both present interesting viewpoints on the struggle of the provisional I.R.A and their fight for independence. Both movies depict murder, and acts that can be classified as terrorism, but they are shown in much different lights. Patriot Games shows us a picture of terrorism, and it's portrayed as pure malice, when Sean Miller's brother is killed by Jack the tension is intensified by a unstoppable sense of revenge. While violence and death are plentiful in The Devil's Own, there is a sense of motivation for it all. The scene where Frankie watches his father get assassinated in front of him shows us a reason why his life is entangled in violence.

The mise en scene breakdown of the scene helps show several things, one the gun is the dominant attraction, which draws focus on arms as a mean to violence. The angle is low, so we see that we are viewing the murderer from a Frankie's childhood perspective, and lastly the ski-mask hides the killer's identity. all three of the elements help shape the way Frankie's character, and the perspective of violence is reflected in this film.
         In Patriot Games we have a much stronger identity of a villain with Sean Miller, although he is a radical I.R.A soldier, he is more focused on revenge than he is in actually fighting for freedom. He displays this in the end when he kills his comrades letting the royal family get away in order to go after Jack.

While the motivations between the Irish character's in this film may be different, there is definitely a singular purpose and national identity that defines these characters, however, Sean and Frankie differ in that Sean Miller is a villain and he is malicious. In this image we can see that he is placed in the film to look vile in contrast with the police figures. We don't see much of Sean's character other than his contempt for Jack and his desire for revenge, because of this his character doesn't fully develop beyond his symbolic villainy. His character's purpose is to kill, where as Frankie's purpose is to kill anyone who stands in the way of his cause. 

I think that it is important to note that the portrayal of the I.R.A in Patriot Games is negative, but it does this intentionally and reflects that there are individuals within the paramilitary group that are extremist terrorists. The film does a good job to note this, where as The Devil's Own exposes the same situations of public violence, and the intention to use explosive weaponry but at very little repercussion to Frankie's character. This is important because Frankie's character is never the villain, he may be a killer, but he is not malicious by nature. Sean Bean and Brad Pitt both portray the role of an I.R.A soldier well, but in Bean's case the script gets in the way of showing duality of this sensitive independence struggle.