In the Land of Saints and Sinners is a 2023 Irish action thriller film directed by Robert Lorenz and written by Mark Michael McNally and Terry Loane.
The film stars Liam Neeson in the lead role, alongside other Irish actors including Kerry Condon, Jack Gleeson, Colm Meaney and Ciarán Hinds.
In the movie, a former hitman leading a quiet life in a coastal Irish village comes out of retirement when an IRA bomber on the run from the law arrives to cause harm.
[4] In 1974, during the Troubles, four members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army - Doireann (their fanatical leader) and the three men in her squad, Conan, Séamus, and Curtis (the youngest and least disciplined of the lot) - carry out a bombing in Belfast that kills six people, including (by accident) three children.
The four then come to the Irish coastal town of Glencolmcille, County Donegal, to lie low since Doireann had been identified to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) because she had gotten out of the car to try to shoo the children away from the front of the pub that was bombed.
A local crime boss, Robert McQue, rescued him from the bottle and put him to work using his combat experience as a contract killer.
While outside the pub Vinnie also notices that Séamus is waiting in the driver's seat in a car that has scratches that match property damage from one of his earlier investigations.
Mortally wounded, Doireann limps across a field to a church while Finbar follows her with his shotgun, which he had retrieved from the back seat of the terrorists' car (since they had stolen it from his house earlier in the day when they ransacked it).
In October 2021, it was announced that Liam Neeson would star in an Ireland set thriller film, re-teaming with director Robert Lorenz.
The website's consensus reads: "Well-written and classically constructed, In the Land of Saints and Sinners is one of the better action thrillers Liam Neeson's made in recent years.
[19] Empire gave the film three out of five stars, concluding in its review that "while it isn’t especially insightful on Irish history, it makes the most of its setting, with the usual scenery — windswept clifftops, dry stone walls, rolling fields — bolstered by some strong performances.
It’s a treat to see actors like Colm Meaney, Ciarán Hinds and Kerry Condon take time off their usual gigs as American-accented characters to return to home turf.
In an unexpected highlight, Jack Gleeson — nearly unrecognisable from his time on the Iron Throne as Joffrey Baratheon — puts in a delightfully slimy turn as Finbarr’s gangster mentee.
The feature finds its essential tension in its approach to Neeson’s on-screen image — here, playing a gentle elder embedded in a quiet town, but also unforgettably an actor that has buttered his bread shooting up criminal henchmen for nearly two decades now.
Neeson is as sturdy as ever in a role Clint Eastwood might have played 20 years ago and a few thousand miles away... And Condon excels, giving a stock character a shudder of intensity and three dimensions.