MOVIE REVIEW : THRILLER HAS A ‘PRAYER’ IN ITS PREMISE

In “A Prayer for the Dying” (citywide) Mickey Rourke plays Martin Fallon, a conscience-stricken IRA hit man on the run--chased by his past, the police and the criminal-terrorist underworlds. It’s a taut premise--but both film and character seem sapped, out of it.

As Fallon, Rourke has stringy auburn hair, dirty ballooning trousers and a lackadaisical, unkempt manner; he’s playing a man in the grip of moral upheaval and spiritual crisis, but he looks like he’s just emerging from a three-day drunk. The movie often seems a little bleary-eyed too: weirdly unfocused, drained of passion--almost as if the film makers were trying to clear their heads.

“Prayer” also arrives amid controversy. Both Rourke and director Mike Hodges have complained about creative interference and Hodges has publicly disowned it, saying it was destroyed by studio editing.

The story, adapted from Jack Higgins’ novel, fuses the IRA background with elements from Graham Greene’s “This Gun for Hire” and Hitchcock’s “I Confess”--while never approaching the thrill or stature of either. As in “This Gun for Hire,” we watch a tormented killer, his heart awakened by pity and love, try to redeem himself; as in “I Confess,” a killer’s confession is sealed by the vow of silence.

This last act is both a conscious ploy and a theologically odd maneuver. Fallon’s last murder--of a gang leader in a cemetery--has been witnessed by a priest, Father Da Costa (Bob Hoskins), whom Fallon then finds and confesses to, supposedly binding him to silence. But, though Da Costa certainly can’t repeat what he’s learned during confession--why should this stop him from testifying on what he saw outside of it?

Just as the story sidesteps moral crises or theological doctrine, it dances glumly around the political issues, concentrating instead on the saccharine relationship blossoming between killer and priest--and, though you hesitate to confess it, Da Costa’s blind, piano-playing niece. When a movie brings in blind girls who see into the souls of ruffians, it needs a more honestly reverent attitude than this one has.

The Fallon-Da Costa relationship may occasionally remind you of Brando and Karl Malden in “On the Waterfront” but, often, it’s closer to the brash, sugary buddyhoods in movies like “Angels With Dirty Faces”--except here it’s not redeemed by humor or pacing. It’s a meeting made in sentimental hell: Da Costa, burly, plug-ugly Hound of Heaven, glares at the shabby, desperate sinner. And Fallon screws up his face in a sly, sweet smirk, mumbles distractedly and calls him “Fa’r”--a gallicism Rourke repeats so often you wonder if he’s suffering from Irish brogue or a whiskey toothache.

These oddball hipsterisms--which only a mo’r could love--don’t jell with the material. The loose-limbed, grungy demeanor that works wonderfully for Rourke in movies like “Rumble Fish” or “Barfly” seems affected here. And, though he’s up against two acting virtuosos, Hoskins and Alan Bates (as the epicene gang boss, Meehan), they can’t seem to spark each other. Bates eases in a little jocular high style--especially in one darkly witty torture scene--but Hoskins is disappointingly ordinary. We can see rage and frustration there--but is it rage at the sinful world or only at the movie he’s trapped in?

It is not surprising that director Hodges tried to have his name removed from this cut. There are few traces left of the offbeat daring that infused such earlier Hodges thrillers as “Get Carter.”

The familiar symbolic elements are there--a church, gray, threatening streets, a carnival, a bordello, even a death scene with a crucifix--but they don’t coalesce into a moral or poetic framework. Everything seems so perfunctory that when Meehan’s degenerate brother shows up to attack the blind niece, you feel less pity or terror than wonderment at why he got there so late. It’s a dirty, maniac’s job, but somebody has to do it.

‘A PRAYER FOR THE DYING’ A Samuel Goldwyn Co. presentation of a Peter Snell production. Producer Peter Snell. Director Mike Hodges. Script Edmund Ward, Martin Lynch. Music Bill Conti. Camera Mike Garfath. Production design Evan Hercules. With Mickey Rourke, Alan Bates, Bob Hoskins, Sammi Davis, Christopher Fulford.

Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes.

MPAA rating: R (Younger than 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian).