Michael Collins.

In Michael Collins, Irish revolutionaries fight the British forces everywhere: on the streets, inside public buildings, at police stations, in the very domiciles of the enemy. But behind the camera all of the filmmakers seem to have been absorbed by the most imperialistic power of all - big-scale Hollywood moviemaking. Watching Michael Collins made me feel that logistics were in the saddle and riding the director, Neil Jordan. The result is never boring but never truly exciting. It lacks a guiding, idiosyncratic consciousness. It is a hollow movie.

Collins was the revolutionary who, after the destruction of the older insurrectionists in the wake of the 1916 uprising, led the terroristic campaign that forced the British to the bargaining table in 1921-22. But, since Collins was one of the negotiators who settled for Ireland's division and the continuance of the oath of allegiance to the crown, he found himself at odds with President Eamon De Valera and many others who wanted a united, independent Irish republic rather than home rule within the British Empire. The former swash-buckling guerrilla now became, for the sake of peace, a beleaguered member of the new establishment and was finally assassinated by some branch of the I.R.A. Obviously, this is a spectacle of crowds, bombardment, oratory, murder, and ignorant armies clashing by day and night.

And at first the director seems to know how to handle his budget. The Easter uprising is presented with proper economy, for where would this movie go if its opening scene was also its most spectacular? Also swift and sure is the depiction of the I.R.A.'s first attacks, with each short action sequence subtly accelerating the tempo of the previous one.

Yet, before Michael Collins is one hour old, we sense that it may or may not get faster, may or may not get noisier, but most certainly won't get any deeper. Two factors are at work here:

First, the current approach to movie spectacle goes something like this: Now that we've spent all this money on extras, historic reconstruction, and firepower, let's show the public as clearly as possible what we bought. Result: predictable long shots of fleeing crowds and exploding buildings, along with equally predictable cut-ins to anguished faces, corpses, etc. But the real masters of spectacle, from D.W. Griffith to David Lean, were artistically ruthless with their raw materials. Not content to display massive sets and crowds, they evoked excitement by selection and emphasis. We may or may not recall the Babylonian infantry being slaughtered by the Persian invaders in Intolerance, but we never forget the way the dying Mountain Girl is suddenly transformed by a cinematographic trick into a mosaic commemorating her sacrifice. The last charge of Lawrence of Arabia's army is impressive in David Lean's epic, but even better is the close-up of a canteen banging against a saddle bow as the charge accelerates. Touches like these are mostly missing from the spectacle of Michael Collins, and without them the burning buildings remain burning sets, the dying victims remain dutiful extras.

Second, it's clear that Jordan wanted his movie to be a thinking-person's epic with characterizations at least as memorable as the spectacle. But the writing of intimate scenes is as banal as the staging of the street battles. For instance, the love triangle of Collins, his best friend Harry Boland, and Kitty Kierna, is as conventional as the Clark Gable-Spencer Tracy-Myrna Loy vehicles of the 1930s. Kitty is finally relegated to being a sounding board for Collins instead of a character in her own right. (Who ever thought that Julia Roberts would end up playing Horatio?)

And, despite Liam Neeson's reliable magnetism and virility, the characterization of the hero is superficial. Collins was an unpredictable compound of intellect and force, personal tenderness and political expedience. For us to be truly fascinated by him, we would have to be exposed to the murkier comers of his nature. But in this movie Collins is just a roaring boy, leaping from battle into oratory and back again, taking time off only for the most conventional of love trysts. In one uncharacteristically quiet moment, he tells a friend that politics have released a violence in him that he now fears was always too much a part of his nature. This is a true revelation and could partially explain why Collins was so willing to compromise at the bargaining table. But the insight is only slipped in, and rather late in the movie at that, and is never made part of the movie's true substance.

However, the last half-hour of Collins begins to grip because Jordan takes a risk in his depiction of the De Valera-Collins relationship, daring to suggest that the future president set up his comrade by sending Collins to negotiate with the British. Because he "wanted someone else to bring back the bad news" while he himself would fight on for a completely independent republic, De Valera may have set the machinery in motion that led to his comrade's death. I don't know how historically defensible this view is but, dramatically, it is the best thing in the movie. Collins and De Valera become an archetypal pair of antagonists: the lion vs. the fox, the bluff warrior vs. the Machiavellian statesman, the Big Fella vs. the Long Fella. And Alan Rickman makes a great, foxy De Valera: secretive and sly, dainty and infinitely dangerous.

I respect Neil Jordan's desire to portray some of his country's anguished history. But sometimes the best way to serve your native land is to explore your own obsessions, for your demons may be your country's demons. Michael Collins is big and bold and public and noisy, but Jordan's earlier film, The Crying Game, in its fantastic melodrama and sexual perversity, conveyed a lot more of the pain of Ireland.