Kill the Irishman (2011)

Limited	03/11/2011
Sunshine Cinema	03/11/2011 - 03/31/2011	21 days
Kendall Square...	03/18/2011 - 03/31/2011	14 days
AMC Empire 25	03/25/2011 - 03/31/2011	7 days
Mann Chinese 6	04/08/2011 - 04/14/2011	7 days
DVD	06/14/2011

Trailer: Click for trailer

Websites: Home

Genre: Crime Drama

Rated: R for strong violence, language and some sexual content/nudity.

Synopsis

Over the summer of 1976, thirty-six bombs detonate in the heart of Cleveland while a turf war raged between Irish mobster Danny Greene (Ray Stevenson) and the Italian mafia. Based on a true story, Kill the Irishman chronicles Greene's heroic rise from a tough Cleveland neighborhood to become an enforcer in the local mob. Turning the tables on loan shark Shondor Birns (Christopher Walken) and allying himself with gangster John Nardi (Vincent D'Onofrio), Greene stops taking orders from the mafia and pursues his own power. Surviving countless assassination attempts from the mob and killing off anyone who went after him in retaliation, Danny Greene's infamous invincibility and notorious fearlessness eventually led to the collapse of mafia syndicates across the U.S. and also earned him the status of the man the mob couldn't kill.

Written and directed by Jonathan Hensleigh and also starring Val Kilmer, Paul Sorvino and Linda Cardellini, Kill the Irishman is inspired by Rick Porrello's true crime account To Kill the Irishman: The War That Crippled the Mafia.

Director's Statement / Interview

Kill the Irishman is based on true events. What drew you to the material and how did directing a film from the material come about for you?

Al Corley and Bart Rosenblatt at Code Entertainment sent me Rick Porello's book To Kill the Irishman, and at first I had a hard time believing that what I'd read was true because Greene's story was stranger than fiction at times.

I knew the Mafia had a presence outside New York, but I didn't know that Cleveland was such an enormous profit center due to the successful infiltration of the dockworkers' unions. Greene's life covered the gamut: he rose from dock worker to Union President to fearless mob figure. The fact that Greene incited a gang war so violent that Cleveland was labeled "Bomb City, U.S.A." and his death eventually led to the collapse of organized crime in Cleveland, well, that's about as good as it gets.

The film features an eclectic cast of well-known actors. What led to casting them and what was it like working with them? Specifically the casting of Ray Stevenson as Danny Greene.

I wanted to work with Ray after seeing him in HBO's "Rome". Ray has a commanding presence, but he's also an everyman. Though Danny Greene was the self-made president of the most powerful union in the Midwest and waged a one-man war against the Mafia, he was also a "man of the people," so to speak, and I think Ray's interpretation of Greene gets at that. Greene was hugely proud of his Irish heritage; he would wear a green suit, drive a green car, and write with a green pen. Ray did a great job capturing Greene's accent and flamboyance. As for the rest of the roles, let's just say the cast list forms a roster of my favorite actors in American cinema over the last twenty years. It was a dream come true.

Obviously, you have an extensive list of screenwriter credits. What were some of the challenges of writing a script based on a true story, and how much research was involved in the process?

The biggest challenge is to condense a complicated story with massive historical sweep into an entertaining two-hour narrative. In order to do that you have to combine or eliminate significant story points and characters. It's a brutal and unpleasant process, but you end up with an unwieldy screenplay unless you force yourself to do it.

Fortunately most of the research had already been done by Rick Porrello, the current Police Chief of Lindhurst - the Cleveland suburb where Greene was killed in 1977. Rick has a passion for Mafia history because his grandfather and three uncles were mob figures who were murdered during Prohibition. Rick's book was filled with volumes of research and documentation that were invaluable in crafting the screenplay. I also digested books on the Midwestern mafia and looked at archival news footage and photos of Greene to gain more insight into his life and the period.

Discuss shooting the film on location. Why was it essential to capturing the story?

We decided to take advantage of Michigan's film rebate program and shot the picture in Detroit. Detroit, like Cleveland, is located on the shore of Lake Erie and still has the shipping and cargo ports that were in use during Danny Greene's time. We were able to find suburban locations that closely resembled Danny Greene's childhood neighborhood of Collinwood, as well as architecture and urban locations depicting Greene's stomping grounds as a mobster.

I don't think we could have successfully "faked" the look of a Midwestern city with our budget, so shooting there was absolutely essential for production.

Are there any upcoming projects you'd like to talk about?

I'm working on a couple of new screenplays, writing a novel, and tending to my other businesses outside the film industry.

What are you hoping for audiences to take from Kill the Irishman?

That they'll be entertained and perhaps learn something new about this extraordinary side-show in American crime history.