There seems to be a certain template for making "Oirish" movies in Hollywood. Add some or all of the following ingredients to your movie script - Aran Sweaters, a sub-Deliverance rural setting, comely maidens with red hair, a village idiot (teeth optional), impromptu céilís and dancing at the crossroads, priests, drunken violence and the obligatory "Ooh arr, begorrah" accents and you have an Irish film. And if you want some controversy, why not try to tackle the situation in Northern Ireland by adding in some IRA men for good measure. Unfortunately, the Devil's Own has quite a few of the aforementioned clichés in abundance.
It is a great shame that with a cast and director of this calibre, they couldn't have come up with something better. There have been very few, if any, decent films ever made about Northern Ireland and perhaps it's time Hollywood stopped trying to put forward its own take on it, especially when it is as cack-handed as The Devil's Own. Not only is the whole movie grossly offensive to Irish people, and anyone else with a brain, but it is a dangerous message to be sending out to gullible Irish Americans. It's time film-makers stopped buying into the idea that the IRA are noble warriors when in fact they and others of their ilk are terrorists, pure and simple.
Avoid this like the plague. Brad Pitt's accent is the least of the problems in this film. He just isn't convincing as the cold-blooded killer he is supposed to be - he's far too nice. Harrison Ford is his usual reliable self but too much of the movie is taken up with a largely irrelevant sub-plot featuring himself and Ruben Blades as his police partner. At times, The Devil's Own seems like an IRA film mixed up with NYPD Blue.
