The film was directed by Mike Hodges, and stars Mickey Rourke, Liam Neeson, Bob Hoskins, and Alan Bates.

At the last minute, a school bus overtakes the army vehicles and detonates the bomb, killing the children.

The team flees the scene, and Fallon travels to London to escape the past and decides never to kill anyone again.

In London, he is approached by a contact to take on one last killing contract on behalf of local gangster cum funeral director Jack Meehan (Alan Bates) and his brother Billy Meehan (Christopher Fulford), to eliminate another gangster, in return for money, a passport and passage to the USA.

Initially reluctant, he nonetheless takes on the job and kills the target, but is seen by the local Catholic priest, Father Michael Da Costa (Bob Hoskins).

Fallon visits the church and confesses to Fr Michael in a bid to ensure his silence; he also meets the priest's blind niece Anna (Sammi Davis), who lives at the church with her uncle; she starts to fall in love with Fallon.

After a struggle, Anna and Michael escape, but the explosion kills Meehan and leaves Fallon fatally injured.

[2] Producer Peter Snell succeeded in raising the entire budget from Sam Goldwyn.

[3] Originally Franc Roddam was going to direct A Prayer for the Dying but left during pre-production due to creative differences with Snell.

[4] "Rodham apparently wanted to make an Irish 'Rambo,' " said Alan Bates, "whereas Peter was aiming for something with far less violence and far more suspense.

Rat-like crooks, old London warehouses, cemeteries-and a blind girl, Anna (Sophie Ward), who is Da Costa's niece.

"[6] "The script (by Edmund Ward) that I was sent by (producer) Peter Snell was a very good adaptation of Jack Higgins' novel," Rourke said.

"I thought that the script needed some of this information to explain why my character, Fallon, picked up a gun.

Tony Earnshaw recalls in his book Made in Yorkshire that another film version of the novel was planned in the 1970s to film in Leeds, the city where the original book was set, starring Lee Marvin and directed and written by Edward Dmytryk.

This man in A Prayer for the Dying is so caught up in his own evil that he's lost perspective, though in a very peculiar way he has his own morality.

He won't hurt old ladies, for example, and he takes genuine pride in what he does: death is an art form to him.

Hodges said he delivered his cut of the film to Goldwyn in March and the company, without consulting him, re-edited it and replaced its musical score.

He called it, "a piece of schlock for the American market divested of any kind of poetry or subtlety."