Roses Have Thoughts

There’s a strain of British and Irish cinema that explores violence not as spectacle, but as psychological infection, a sickness of the soul, festering beneath the surface of civil society. Marc Evans’s Resurrection Man is very much in this tradition, a disturbing and often stylish thriller that stares directly into the abyss of sectarian brutality in 1970s Belfast.

Based on the novel by Eoin McNamee, the film loosely fictionalises the murderous spree of the Shankill Butchers, a Protestant gang responsible for some of the most grotesque killings of the Troubles. The central figure, Victor Kelly (played with cold charisma by a young Stuart Townsend), is a dandyish killer, part street thug, part urban phantom, who stalks the city with straight razors and a dead-eyed calm, its easy to see why some have likened this to a vampire flick, with Townsend going on to play Lestat in Queen of the Dammed (2002) party because of this film.

Townsend gives a striking, career-defining performance. His Victor is unreadable and narcissistic, a man both shaped by his environment and existing beyond it. He’s not given the kind of backstory that softens or explains, and the film is stronger for it. Opposite him is Ryan (James Nesbitt), a conflicted journalist who seeks to expose Kelly, not for justice exactly, but to work through his own trauma and guilt. John Hannah, best known then for more affable roles, is compellingly ambiguous as Darkie Larche, a loyalist power broker whose affability masks something much darker.

Evans directs with a sense of brooding atmosphere, using Belfast’s damp streets, decaying interiors, and political murals to frame the violence not as action but as ritual. His camera often lingers uncomfortably, not for gore but for suggestion. There’s a stylised texture to the film, slow motion, symbolic imagery, echoing voiceovers, that at times feels overwrought but never insincere. The influence of Lynch and early Scorsese is clear, though filtered through a gritty Irish lens.

What holds the film back, however, is its uneven tone. At times it veers into the operatic without quite earning the grandeur. The stylisation occasionally undercuts the political gravity of its subject. This is, after all, a film rooted in real-world horror. While McNamee’s script is poetically constructed, some viewers may find its elliptical approach too elusive, even evasive.

Still, Resurrection Man deserves more attention than it received on release. It is a flawed but fascinating work: part character study, part urban gothic, part meditation on the contagiousness of violence. It doesn’t offer easy catharsis or clean moral conclusions, which is precisely why it lingers.

Stylish, provocative, and anchored by a chilling central performance, Resurrection Man is an ambitious if uneven examination of evil and identity in a city haunted by its past.

IMDB