A Prayer for the Dying

The 1987 Mickey Rourke vehicle "A Prayer of the Dying" teeters between morality play and melodrama, loaded with cardboard characters that range from IRA brutes to crazed London mob bosses that make the Kray twins look prim.

But tucked in the midst of the film's plot-driven, logic-defying action are pair of noteworthy performances. Rourke acquits himself well as Fallon, an IRA terrorist who has walked away from the battle after a botched operation that kills a busload of school kids instead of the military convoy it was intended to take out. After making his way to London, the superhumanly stealthy Fallon discovers that it's the end of the line unless he agrees to help out a nut-job crime figure named Meehan (Alan Bates) by rubbing out a competitor. Meehan is the sort of guy who runs the dirtiest of rackets -- drugs, prostitution, the works -- while simultaneously offering tender care to the dead at his funeral home. Meehan runs both businesses with his lunatic brother Billy (Christopher Fullers), a psychotic sadist with rapist tendencies.

It's only with great reluctance that Fallon agrees to the job; once it's done, he can collect fake papers and a fat bundle of cash and disappear. But when the killing is witnessed by a priest (Bob Hoskins), Fallon finds himself playing protector to the man of the cloth -- who is former military, and a pretty tough customer himself -- as well as the priest's blind niece, Anna (Sammi Davis, whose character is an amalgam of every clicked good hearted woman who ever helped redeem a gangster, and whose performance is, by modern standards, utterly unconvincing).

When Hoskins' priest and Bates' Meehan start butting heads, the sociopathic Meehan formulates a plot to destroy the priest and frame Fallon for it. But will Meehan get Fallon before Fallon's own former comrades in arms -- a pursuing IRA soldier (Liam Neeson) and his cold-as-ice female accomplice who is also a stone-cold killer (Alison Doody)? The script is problematic to say the least, with too many unrealistic (and simplistic) elements stirred together, but there's some real fun to be had here with Hoskins, Rourke, and Bates bouncing off one another.

Director Mike Hodges is interviewed for one of the special features on this Twilight Time Blu-ray release, which gives the film careful treatment and a crisp, bright hi-def transfer. Hodges explains various production difficulties and laments that the film was taken over by producers who wanted to bring the film more into line with their ideas. Another extra features an interview with cinematographer Mike Garfath, whose comments about lighting and film stock prove interesting. Otherwise, the extras are as you'd expect: Julie Kirgo's liner notes are insightful, as always, and Bill Conti's score is available as an isolated audio track. There's also an original theatrical trailer.

"A Prayer for the Dying"
Blu-ray
$29.95
http://www1.screenarchives.com/title_detail.cfm/ID/31180/A-PRAYER-FOR-THE-DYING-1987