Product Details

• Actors: David Williamson (IV), Stuart Townsend, Brenda Fricker, George Shane, Lee Mulrooney
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Polygram USA Video
• VHS Release Date: February 8, 2000
• Run Time: 102 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00000IYPN
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #275,879 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars TRUE LIFE VIOLENCE IS TOUGH VIEWING, May 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Resurrection Man [VHS] (VHS Tape)

RESURRECTION MAN is based on the book by Eoin Mc Namee,which in turn,is based on the Shankill Butchers who terrorised Belfast from 1975 to 1977. Victor Kelly(Stuart Townsend)hates Catholics with a passion.His mother(Brenda Fricket)thinks the world of him.One night,he carves up an innocent Catholic walking home from work into bloody shreds. Reporter Ryan(James Nesbitt,WAKING NED)is determined to unmask the killers,even though he is a drunk who beats up his wife. Notable for Townsend's chilling performance,RESURRECTION MAN is very noir but at times is a bit unpleasent. Not ahorror fim,more of a drama.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like a car crash - violent, but I couldn't look away., October 11, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Resurrection Man [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I bought this video because of Stuart Townsend. I wanted to see every movie he's starred in. I wasn't expecting it to be as good as it is. It's definitely one of his best performances. He's frighteningly believable as a ruthless killer. In every scene, I immediately searched for him, knowing that, albeit disturbing, I wouldn't be able to look away. Very, very intense film. Well worth the money. Each time I watch it, I see layers of meaning that I didn't discover the last time. Paying attention to the scenes of his mother and father give further insite as to how and why he came to be such a disturbed man. Stuart Townsend deserves an award for this performance. Although I've seen him in numerous other movies including comedies, I still believed that he was Victor Kelly the Ruthless Killer in this movie.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Serial murderers at work jumpstarting a sectarian war, May 4, 2010

By 

Sugafoot (The Fields of Athenry) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Resurrection Man [Region 2] (DVD)

This movie is based on the novel of the same name by Eoin McNamee, which in turn is based on the rampage of a gang of serial murderers known as the 'Shankill butchers,' who were members of a Protestant terrorist organization that operated in the city of Belfast in northern Ireland during the 1970's and early 80's. This gang randomly abducted, sadistically tortured, using methods that would have made Jack the ripper proud and then executed upwards of 30 innocent Catholic boys and men. They were led by a 5 foot 6 inch sociopath named Lenny Murphy who is depicted in this movie as 'Victor'. He in turn had a handler who is depicted in this movie as 'McClure,' but was in real life according to historian Martin Dillon in his book, The Trigger-men, "a notorious paedophile evangelist, William McGrath, a member of Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church...[and]...a British Intelligence asset from the mid1950's (Dillon, pg. 26)."

The actions of Murphy and his gang as dramatized in this movie were sanctioned by the leadership of the organization he worked for the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and were sold to the rank and file and their community as a method of cowing, intimidating, the Catholic minority of northern Ireland into submission. So that they would not have to give that minority the right to vote, an end to gerrymandering, equal housing, equal employment opportunities, and civil rights in general. However as one can ask any British soldier returning from Iraq, were the Shia cowed by the secterian murders perpetrated against them by Al Qaeda who are Sunni? I think not. Sectarian murders are designed, as McGrath and the leadership of the UVF would have known, to plunge a society into a full blown religious war.

Lastly, I did not write the above review to excuse or diminish the acts of terror committed by the IRA many of which were also sectarian.