‘Titanic Town’ Revisits the Troubles in Ireland

The Shooting Gallery launches its second series of worthy but neglected films with “Titanic Town,” and it’s likely to be a tough sell. It’s well-made but conventional, and it deals with strife in Northern Ireland--which at this point may be a tough combination for anyone feeling saturated by films on the subject. What’s more, Julie Walters plays its doughty, middle-aged, working-class heroine with virtually no variation on numerous similar portrayals.

Walters’ Bernie McPhelimy, her husband Aidan (Ciaran Hinds) and their four children believe they’re leaving their troubles behind when they move up to the pleasant tract of Andersontown in West Belfast. The community’s housing consists of simple red-brick row houses placed on spacious lots with trees, unlike urban row houses built directly along the sidewalk. But the McPhelimys have moved straight into a war zone, with constant skirmishes between the IRA and British soldiers, for the year is 1972.

When a friend looking after Bernie’s young son is killed in the gunfire, Bernie is galvanized into action. Like many crusaders, her initial goal is modest: to get both sides to stop shooting at each other during the day when children are out and about.

Bernie is a strong, forthright woman with native intelligence to balance her innocence. She and her loyal friend Deirdre (Aingeal Grehan) refuse to be daunted when they attend a meeting of peace-minded local women only to discover that they are from Protestant South Belfast.

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Bernie not only has placed herself in a situation that causes her neighbors to think of her as a traitor merely for attending the meeting but also takes the opportunity to state what everybody knows: that her friend was killed by a stray IRA bullet.

Uproar ensues, which makes Bernie only more determined. In short order she’s meeting with IRA leaders--with the proviso that she personally present their demands to the secretary of state for Northern Ireland. In her new role as a peace broker, she hits upon the idea of suggesting to the secretary that she lead a petition drive for peace.

Bernie emerges as an instant and controversial celebrity whose fame predictably takes its toll on her family. The impetus for her becoming politically involved was to secure the safety of her loved ones, now endangered by her widely misunderstood activism.

Director Roger Michell and writer Anne Devlin, in adapting to the screen Mary Costello’s autobiographical novel, strongly make the specific point that Irish Catholics and the IRA are not synonymous and the universal point that in the face of chronic conflict, somebody, sometime, somewhere is going to have to get people on both sides to start sitting down and talking to each other if the strife is ever to end.

“Titanic Town” is an admirable, thoughtful venture, but it may leave you with the feeling that you’ve seen it all before.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: violence, language, adult themes and situations.

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‘Titanic Town’

Julie Walters: Bernie McPhelimy

Ciaran Hinds: Aidan McPhelimy

Nuala O’Neill: Annie McPhelimy

Ciaran McMenamin: Dino

A Shooting Gallery presentation of a Company Pictures production for Pandora Cinema, BBC Films, British Screen and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s National Lottery Fund. Director Roger Michell. Producers George Faber, Charles Pattinson. Screenplay by Anne Devlin; from the novel by Mary Costello. Cinematographer John Daly. Editor Kate Evans. Costumes Hazel Pethig. Production designer Pat Campbell. Art director Dave Arrowsmith. Running time:1 hour, 41 minutes.

Exclusively at the Beverly Center Cineplex, Beverly Blvd. at La Cienega Blvd., (310) 652-7760; (310) 777-FILM (No. 172).