Well Deserved Praise

Very disappointed :(

Lack of good storyline.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

After having heard that this was a good film from a friend of mine years ago.I have at last rented it,and while it got swept-under by the fantastic American Beauty,this is still a very good Irish/English film. The Plot:Michael Lynch(Kevin"K-Pax"Spacy)is someone who cares about his wife and kids,but he also leads another life as a leader of a gang(that includes a pre-fame Colin Farrel!)The gang are constantly getting followed by police who want to catch them doing the crimes,due to the media outlets making Michael look like a modern-day "Robin Hood!",so Michael decides to pull off the "ultumate" crime-that is to steel some very valuable works of art.But with Micales addiction to the lime-light,and with the police catching up,the crime is sure to end in bloodshed. View on the film:While the accent's in the film do make it a bit tough to fully get sucked into the film(due to knowing how the actors "really" sound.)They are able to still keep you interested in the film.Spacy gives a very good and interesting performance in that,unlike Spacys character in American Beauty,Spacy has a self-confidence and determination thats unlike most of his performances. Final view on the film.A very enjoyable English/Irish film,with a very good performance by Spacy.

After the general, a film that romanticized the life of Dublin gangster the general to such heroic proportions that it made the average Dublin person sick, along come Kevin and his attempted portrayal of Mr. Lynch or martin Cahill, aka the general, the acting is so bad that this crime drama becomes a comedy for the native Dub, and a tragedy for the Kevin Spacey fan. in short, is the movie worth a look.... No, unless u like bad acting with hilarious 'proper Irish accents, ah sure to be sure to be sure'. The story is ripped off from the commercially successful 'The General' which, despite is glorification of a well known Dublin animal in Martin Cahill is still worth a look, on a domestic scale because it shows real working class Dublin, and on an international scale because of he true Irish acting and killer cast, including John Voight. All in all, 'Ordinary Decent Criminal' is anything but a decent film. Avoid.

This film worked quite well as a comedy, with a notorious criminal making fools out of the Gardai. As such, I would have given it 7 or 8 out of 10. Kevin Spacey is always worth watching, as is David Kelly, who had a cameo role as the priest. However I have a couple of reservations.Firstly, you can only go so far with comedies on this subject: so you have to ignore the torture and violence scenes. You could have done an "A-Team" where nobody gets hurt, but since this is loosely based on a real life criminal, that would have been hypocritical.Secondly, I have never in my entire born days heard such appalling Dublin accents. I had to laugh when I discovered that the dialogue coach was called Brendan Gunn - he should have been fired instead of all the other guns that were fired on screen. Spacey's accent never got past Rockall. And he was far from being alone in this respect. Casting directors should know better.Dublin accents (north or south of the Liffey) are not easy, even for Cork or Belfast people, but for good examples of it being done well, see Kate Hudson in "About Adam".However I have to admit that I did quite enjoy the film.Finally for examples of accents bad enough to spoil films, try Michael Caine in Hurry Sundown and Sean Connery in The Molly Maguires or anything else for that matter. Except that Connery always gets away with it.

I'm pretty sure that this movie is a public service message begging all criminals in the world to move to Ireland. According to the movie, the police in Dublin are by far the stupidest people to be found outside of an Anna Nicole Smith fan club.Micheal Lynch (Kevin Spacey) is the title ordinary decent criminal. He plans and commits lots of robberies, breaks his associates' hands, and has people killed, but you're supposed to like him because, well, he's played by Kevin Spacey and it is inhuman not to sympathize with any character played by Spacey (except maybe in Se7en, but c'mon, you thought the fat guy had it coming, too). Further, he doesn't seem to be a Mormon, but he seemingly has two wives, Christine (Linda Fiorentino) and Lisa (Helen Baxendale). He commits lots of crimes, which drives the unbelievably inept police crazy, goes up against the IRA, which really pisses them off, and steals a priceless painting (well, not so priceless, the value is repeatedly quoted as 30,000,000 of some odd money measurement), which nobody really seems to care too much about.I could go into great detail about this movie, but it's really not worth my time. The acting is not bad, the directing is adequate, but the script has plot holes that you could drive space shuttles through. The police repeatedly fall for the "it's not me, but someone with my build and height wearing a mask" trick throughout the movie. At the end, when they believe they've killed Lynch, the police just assume that the unidentifiable body is his. Don't they have dental records in Ireland? Can't anybody at least check his blood type? Obviously, no. They just assume that everything is resolved. They could drastically improve their competency if they hired a team of third graders to point out the obvious idiocies they commit.This was the longest 94 minute movie I've ever seen.