Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

jhowar1 It's interesting to see Irish reviewers' takes on movies like this. I haven't seen Cal in years, but I still listen to the beautiful soundtrack by Mark Knopfler. I put it on this morning, which is why I thought to look up the movie here.I remember being captivated by the drama of this young kid in over his head, both with the IRA and in his romance with an older woman. The scenes had a raw grittiness that felt very real to me when I saw it in the theater, back in the mid-1980s.So it's surprising to me to hear the film described by at least one reviewer here as both unlikely and clichéd. And I can't argue with that, in terms of history or culture or politics, because I wasn't there. Anyone who lived in Belfast at the time would surely have a more realistic view of the IRA and of Irish culture than I do.But this morning, my young son looked up when that first song came on, and gave me a look, like, "What in the world is this?" After the song ended, he said, "Dad, it's so beautiful, it almost hurts." That's how I always felt about Cal. I'm a sucker for anything that's both beautiful and sad. That's how I remember the movie.

blacknorth A strangely and unhappily compelling film from the pen over the wildly over-rated Bernard MacLaverty. The script piles improbability on improbability but, given that its premise is so unlikely, perhaps that is the point, a kind of coincidental momentum of the poor and the bad.Helen Mirren doesn't fare too well as an RUC widow - there are many Irish actresses who could have suited and played this role much more convincingly. John Lynch is fine, looks the part, capturing something of the long-haired, unwashed aesthetic of the hunger-strikers of the time. The best performance is easily by Donal McCann as Lynch's Da, greasily working up a sweat at the local slaughterhouse. Ray McAnally is wasted in a small part.I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but it's an interesting addition to the Troubles archive. Some fine photography and backdrops go a long way towards salvaging a rotten script.

Glenn Walsh Nobody that I have ever discussed this film with thinks it is any good. The characters are pretty much stereotypes from 'The Troubles,', but the core of the plot requires a suspension of disbelief that can't be made. The idea of a murdered RUC officer's widow taking up with a known Provo (regardless of her religion) is just too much to take in. Cal himself is a pretty unsympathetic character and by the end of the film he gets the kicking that he richly deserves. To make matters worse we get the usual diddly-dee score and lots of culshies doing rustic stuff because we are all so backward here.

taia The film "Cal" is about a young boy who falls in love with Marcella, both Catholic. Cal "works" for the IRA, and he participated in the killing of Marcella's husband. Cal wants to get out of the IRA, but that's not too easy. Anyway, the whole story is really about the relationship between Cal and Marcella, a great Irish love story. A story with an Irish ending...