Barnes & Noble

A staple on most critics' "Greatest Movies Ever Made" list, this was Buster Keaton's own favorite among the many silent masterpieces in which he starred and directed. The plot, as elegantly constructed as a mathematical equation, centers around little Johnny Gray, an engineer rejected from the Confederate Army, who becomes a hero when he rescues both his beloved engine and his sweetheart from the Yankees. The marvelously inventive gags, almost all of which take place aboard, or involve, moving trains, include the sublime spectacle of a real locomotive crashing off a burning trestle bridge into the river below. Designed to look like a Matthew Brady photograph come to life, THE GENERAL remains the most hauntingly accurate vision of the Civil War ever filmed. The inspired combination of comedy and historical realism confounded '20s audiences; the movie was an expensive flop that contributed to Keaton's professional demise. His brilliant career as an independent filmmaker had been over for years before THE GENERAL was recognized as the work of cinematic genius that it is. Kryssa Schemmerling

All Movie Guide

John Boorman, who won the 1998 Cannes Film Festival's Direction award for this film, previously won the same Cannes award almost three decades earlier for his Leo the Last (1969) about an alienated aristocrat in a London slum. Shot in widescreen color (but printed in sharp black-and-white), The General is a biographical portrait of ruthless Irish crime lord Martin Cahill, shot down outside his home by a single assassin on August 18, 1994. After this opening, the film then unfolds as a lengthy flashback of the events that led to his death, sketching in the raw beginnings of the youthful Martin (Eamonn Owens of The Butcher Boy) and moving into the Dublin slum of Hollyfield to show the adult Cahill (Brendan Gleeson) and his link to a local cop, Inspector Ned Kenny (Jon Voight). Various thefts enable Cahill to support his wife Frances (Maria Doyle Kennedy), his four children, and his sister-in-law Tina (Angeline Ball). As the years pass, Cahill rises as a mobster, bamboozling cops, constructing airtight alibis, pulling off a near-impossible jewel heist, and setting up a menage a trois with Frances and Tina. (Both actresses were seen previously in Alan Parker's The Commitments). Bhob Stewart

Product Details

• UPC: 043396037267
• Source: SONY PICTURES
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Cinemascope (2.35:1)
• Presentation: B&W, Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby Digital Surround
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English, Français, Español
• Time: 2:04:00
• Sales Rank: 31,078

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