Word: milltowns
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...inspiration of comic-book artiste Bob Burden to answer these ornate rhetorical questions. He created, in his Mystery Men stories, "a bizarre hodge-podge crew of second string, blue collar, milltown heroes." Now Burden's words are made flesh in a movie version that, for all its fights and stuff blowing up, dares to deflect action-adventure expectations to pursue off-kilter character comedy...
Tucked inside the rows of uneven graves at Milltown Cemetery in Belfast, it is easy to believe that the unofficial war in Northern Ireland between Catholic and Protestant paramilitaries continues. Two boys visit a lump of plastic flowers that passes as a fresh grave, the caretaker sweeps a traveled path past still shining headstones marked "IRA Volunteer" and the police surveillance camera hovers atop a thin gray tower across the Falls Road, watching shadowy forms dart among the monuments...
With the recent visit of President Clinton, the international community turned to Belfast, hoping that with the new Northern Ireland Assembly and the recent withdrawal of British troops, neighborhoods like the Catholic enclave surrounding Milltown would get a chance to catch their breath, a chance at peace. But as authorities in the Northern capital continue backpedaling when pressed about substantive police and housing reform, points of contention among the poor on both sides of the religious divide, the old conflicts continue...
...Milltown teaches the walking wounded of Belfast anything, it is the finality of death. Weaving one's way through the cramped gray stones and overgrown plots, surveying the slope almost entirely covered with casualties of street violence, it is impossible not to covet the small space of empty grass at the bottom of the hill. Whether this desire for peace prompted by exhaustion is enough to build a just government remains to be seen...
...aftermath of the Milltown attack, Ulster's Catholic community was suspicious of everyone. Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political wing, charged that the R.U.C. was in collusion with the grenade- throwing attacker, as evidenced by the low police profile around the cemetery. Officials in Belfast dismissed the charge, explaining that only a few policemen were in the area because the R.U.C. was responding to previous complaints that its presence had inflamed mourners at similar graveside ceremonies...