The key ingredient, for me, is that BLOODY SUNDAY doesn't seem in the least bit scripted or staged -- it's like something rounded up on the fly. The notion of it being a recreation is gone from your head the minute it starts. There are no "tells" that we're watching actors reading lines (partly because a lot of what's said between the Irish is unintelligible due to their thick accents), or that a director shouted "action!" and "cut!" after each take.

We're experiencing, of course, the familiar techniques used in Gillo Pontecorvo's classic THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1966) -- photography that feels professionally unprofessional (i.e., the usual jerky, hand-held stuff that nonetheless captures everything you're meant to see), shrewd cutting, an extraordinary verisimilitude, and acting that feels intense but unprepared.

On top of this, SUNDAY's grim, washed-out colors fit the mood of the piece and reflect the low-income vistas of working-class Derry.

The difference is that SUNDAY seems unusually realistic even within the rules of this sort of thing. You don't care after a few minutes that you're not hearing each and every line because you're absorbing the action piecemeal, like a slightly breathless eavesdropper. Bit by bit, the basics get through as the film cuts back and forth between the key Irish and British players, and gradually the accumulated weight of it becomes affecting in ways you don't expect. It's a sad piece. It gets you deep down.

Giving the viewer a sense of confusion and uncertainty, says Greengrass, was "deliberate" because it conveys the way an event like this would play out to an observer who just happened to be there without knowing each and every player, or without having an encyclopedic knowledge of the political conflicts in Northern Ireland up to that point. History, says the writer-director, "is shards of memory put together into columns, and from these we put together our beliefs."

A veteran of British TV dramas with a lone theatrical feature, THE THEORY OF FLIGHT (1998, with Kenneth Branagh and Helena Bonham Carter), to his credit, Greengrass has an obvious talent for this sort of movie. But the key element, he says, is that SUNDAY was reenacted almost entirely by veterans of the massacre, or by friends or relatives or children of the veterans -- both British and Irish. This, he says, is "what makes it work [and] gives it emotional truth."

James Nesbit (LUCKY BREAK, WELCOME TO SARAJEVO) is an exception to this scheme. He plays Irish protest organizer Ivan Cooper, a real-life guy who sadly withdrew from political activism after the tragedy, and gives one of the year's finest performances hands down. He's been a Best Actor contender in the Oscar Balloon for months now, and he's not leaving.

I'd still like to know someday what the Irish in this film are saying to each other -- the particulars, I mean -- and suggested to Greengrass that the DVD should perhaps have a subtitle option. He said he's fine with that.

Greengrass agrees that Pontecorvo's classic was a key influence, but he's not much into discussing cinematic style. Every time I tried talking about the aesthetics of this relatively low-budget effort, he always returned to the actual event and the reactions to it, and his having tried to pay respect to the truth by having survivors play themselves, and by striving to present an honest, balanced account.

It's not impartial -- not entirely. BLOODY SUNDAY obviously favors the Irish protestor view of things. All but one of the sympathetic portrayals are on their side, and all the bodies. But then I've read a lot about the killings and can't imagine how even a dedicated Whitehall propagandist could come up with a version sympathetic to the Brits.

Greengrass's screenplay was inspired by Don Mullan's respected investigative tome, EYEWITNESS BLOODY SUNDAY. Mullan was a co-producer, consultant and actor in the film.

During a question-and-answer session after the Museum of Tolerance screening, Greengrass expressed hope that SUNDAY might contribute to a process in England and Ireland that will help put the tragedy to rest.

Final closure is expected when the Saville inquiry, an independent judicial investigation into the killings ordered four years ago by Prime Minister Tony Blair, delivers its final report later this year. The British were obliged to re-open the case four years ago in order to ensure support for the May 1998 Good Friday Agreement from Sinn Fein, the Irish political group. "Our concern now is simply to establish the truth and to close this painful chapter once and for all," Blair has stated. (The inquiry Web site is at http://www.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org.uk.)

The Saville inquiry is expected to debunk the official whitewash of the Bloody Sunday massacre that came out of an April 1972 inquiry by a guy with the excessively British-sounding name of Lord Widgery. According to this account, the British soldiers shot the Irish protestors in self-defense, after being been fired upon first.

In any event, SUNDAY has been praised up and down by nearly every big-time critic who's seen it thus far (Elvis Mitchell of the NEW YORK TIMES and THE NEW YORKER's Anthony Lane, among them), and it staggers me when I hear colleagues predict that mainstreamers will ignore it, and that it won't even be on the Academy's radar screen when it comes to sussing out the year's finest. I mean, c'mon ...

You've got the VILLAGE VOICE critic Jim Hoberman comparing its staged atrocities to the "Odessa Steps" sequence from BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, and NEW YORK magazine critic Peter Rainer calling it "the most visceral and cumulatively powerful account of civil war since ... THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS."

Rainer also says that "the depth and range of the film's characterizations, its comprehension of grief, carry it well beyond the standard successes of the semi-documentary format. The primitive force of this film seems to bubble up from the vast collective memory of the combatants. It's like watching a nightmare made flesh."

Rollback

After calling around and checking with the right people, I ran a story a week ago Wednesday (10.2) about the firm intentions of Miramax and DreamWorks to open their respective Leonar do DiCaprio films - GANGS OF NEW YORK and CATCH ME IF YOU CAN - on Wednesday, December 25th, and how nobody -- especially Miramax, since DreamWorks had the 12.25 slot first -- would be backing off.

I'd heard from a source within the company that Miramax topper Harvey Weinstein might still blink and move GANGS to an earlier date, but the Miramax spokesperson held firm. And so I wrote, "It's locked, it's firm, get used to it -- Christmas Day is going to be a Leo double-header."

Now Miramax has changed its mind and told VARIETY's Charles Lyons GANGS will now open on one of three earlier Fridays - 12.20, 12.13 or 12.6. That's funny about the December 6th option because a Miramax spokesperson told me last week the New York GANGS press junket is set to happen in New York on that same weekend.

What happened? Weinstein and DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg had a talk, according to VARIETY, and Harvey was persuaded to back off. He had been the lone advocate within Miramax of the 12.25 strategy; his distribution people have long been advocating an earlier date like Thanksgiving. So that's the end of that story....for now.

People Power

I'm not suggesting that Miramax get off its duff and release Dan Algrant's PEOPLE I KNOW before New Year's Eve so Al Pacino, its star, can have a shot at reaping some year-end acting honors. Really, I'm not. Miramax has already relented after my pushing for the same thing a few weeks ago on behalf of THE QUIET AMERICAN and its star, Michael Caine (support for the film at the Toronto Film Festival was the deciding factor), and I should probably leave well enough alone.

It's just that PEOPLE I KNOW, a dark, semi-political piece about an aging New York publicist (Pacino) who gets involved in a murder, is said to be another victim of Miramax's post-9.11 attitude, and it seems unfair. Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein apparently feels that anything downbeat about Rudy Giuliani, New York City or America the Beautiful should be shelved until further notice, or until critics and journalists pressure him to do otherwise.

This posture is why the somewhat anti-American AMERICAN wasn't given a release date until recently, and it's apparently why PEOPLE I KNOW, which wrapped shooting in April '01 and has been sitting around finished a year or so, is still languishing. Every time I go to Miramax's L.A. screening room I see a print of PEOPLE I KNOW inside two film cans on the floor next to the reception desk, but they won't screen it. Now, however, it's playing in Rome, and VARIETY and SHOWBIZ DAILY have run rave reviews.

"Anyone who wants to see Al Pacino in one of his most impressive roles since SCENT OF A WOMAN is going to have to get on a plane to Rome, at least for the time being," writes reviewer Lee Marshall. "In less troubled times, Pacino's performance as a tired, jaded, pill-popping New York publicist and theatrical agent struggling to hold onto the only thing that reminds him he is human -- his militant past as a civil liberties campaigner -- would be on the fast track to an Oscar awards campaign."

However, he adds, "A combination of commercial bad timing and self-regulatory censorship has meant that Miramax still has no U.S. release scheduled for this tight, dark, compelling political drama, over a year after it was wrapped and ready."

Algrant (SEX AND THE CITY) "examines the New York of corrupt political cabals, and is openly critical of an unnamed, right-wing mayor who, Pacino's character complains, is one of those responsible for turning the town into a 'police state' in which 'a lot of people ... have come to fear us and hate us,'" Marshall continues.

"One can see Miramax's dilemma: in the present climate of grin-and-bear-it solidarity, the film's bad-ass attitude to U.S. politics means that it is going to be a difficult prospect on home ground, even more than a year after September 11."

In an earlier cut, Algrant had included some kind of visual effect in which it appeared that the World Trade Center towers (still standing when PEOPLE was shot in early '01) had fallen and were lying on their side. It was more of an illusion shot than anything else, and was meant to convey the morning-after mindset of Pacino's character. It's been removed, in any event.

I'm told Miramax might want to cram PEOPLE I KNOW into their already packed fall/holiday release schedule, although it's getting late in the day for such a move. It sounds like a good film, though. I ran an admiring piece a year or so about Jon Robin Baitz's script, and included some remarks from New York publicist Bobby Zarem, whom Pacino's character is pretty much modelled upon, and these recent reviews on top of this tells me it's at least something to look forward to next year. Sometime between January and March, I would think.

If Miramax decides to go with a one-week qualifying run in New York and Los Angeles later this year, so much the better.

Upper Hand?

In a roundabout way, Leonardo DiCaprio is Oliver Stone's new best friend...or so it appears.

Here's how it works: Leo's recent decision to commit to start filming Martin Scorsese's THE AVIATOR -- a Howard Hughes biopic with a script by John Logan -- sometime in March or April of '03 has apparently pushed back plans for his starring in ALEXANDER THE GREAT, a big-scale biopic and battle epic that Baz Lurhman (MOULIN ROUGE) is supposed to direct in early '03. Baz has a script by Ted Tally, an alliance with producer Dino de Laurentiis, and financing from distributors Universal and 20th Century Fox.

But the schedule of THE AVIATOR, the deals for which are now being finalized, means Luhrman and Laurentiis will have to wait until sometime in the fall of '03 to start rolling, with the Hughes film occupying Leo until the late summer.

This gives a strategic advantage to writer-director Oliver Stone, who's reportedly planning to shoot his own ALEXANDER biopic with Colin Farrell as the Macedonian conqueror sometime in early '03. I didn't check with Farrell's agent, but an upper-echelon guy told me yesterday the actor's schedule is currently open for such a commitment.

If this timeline comes together for Stone (who's wanted to make an ALEXANDER flick since the early '90s, and at one time had interested Tom Cruise in playing the lead), he'll be in a position to shoot first and release first, even though a distributor hasn't been signed. A spokesman for Stone said Thursday that his ALEXANDER script, which has reportedly been worked on by Christopher Kyle and is a different bird than the Cruise project, "hasn't [yet] been turned in with a budget."

Stone's ALEXANDER, which I'm told will be filmed in either Thailand, Morocco or Spain (or a combination thereof), will be produced by Initial Entertainment Group, which is owned by Intermedia.

Anyway, if Stone's project rolls early enough it's more than possible that Universal and Fox would consider bailing on Luhrman's ALEXANDER, given the concern that when projects about the same subject get into a foot race (the Wyatt Earp's, the volcano pics, the meteor movies, etc.) the film that hits theatres first always has the box-office advantage....although there have been exceptions. (Like ARMAGEDDON doing well even though DEEP IMPACT was out first.)

Most of the people who read this column would probably want to see both Alexander's because they're that way, but I would guess your average palooka would be a little less enthused about the Baz and Leo version if it arrived, say, a year after Oliver and Colin's. Let's do a poll: If you could only see one, which one would it be?

In short, Leo's throwing in with his GANGS OF NEW YORK director and the Hughes project (which Michael Mann, who first interested Leo in doing it, is still onboard to produce) is threatening the fortunes of his ROMEO + JULIET director. Unless, of course, Baz hires someone else. Or unless I'm being spun and Stone's project won't be rolling film as soon as I'm hearing, in which case all bets are off.

Gangs Reel

I finally caught that 20-minute extended trailer of Scorsese's GANGS OF NEW YORK that was shown at last May's Cannes Film Festival, and like everyone else, I was stirred and encouraged.

Not entirely sold, though. If I trusted assemblage reels like this, I would be calling GANGS an operatic, brutally violent street epic that's destined for Oscar glory. Wonderfully acted not just by Daniel Day Lewis (whose performance has been widely touted) but also Leonardo DiCaprio, whose Amsterdam Vallon character seems fierce and fearless and hasn't the slightest problem with an Irish accent, despite anything you might have read.

And superbly filmed by Michael Ballhaus (which it obviously has been, all hedging aside) and designed by Dante Ferretti. It's always a little odd when a director throws a composer's score out the window, like Scorsese did with Elmer Bernstein's, and replacing it with a new one by Howard Shore, but there's no need to make too much of this.

Of course, you can't really tell anything from a 20-minute reel. I know this because I saw similar assemblage from Charles Shyer's AFFAIR OF THE NECKLACE last summer and thought it looked and sounded pretty cool....and then I saw the movie.

I get the whole idea of Leo's needing to be brawny and bulky, since Amsterdam's a tough hombre and no one would buy him in this role if he looked like the thin kid in TITANIC...but he looks like he overdid it a touch. He's right on the edge between stocky and chubby. But he looks utterly authentic in the role, and what a tremendous actor -- he's such a sharp, cunning talent -- perhaps the best of his generation.

There's a cool CGI overhead shot of 1850's Manhattan...what did that one cost, I wonder?

I was a bit disappointed the trailer didn't include a shot of the infamous "jar of ears" (which was mentioned so prominently in Kim Master's ESQUIRE piece last summer). I've been told by a Miramax publicist, actually, that the close-up of the jar of ears is out of the film and they're now only visible in a long shot.

Its' going to take me years, perhaps decades, to forgive Cameron Diaz for making CHARLIE'S ANGELS and THE SWEETEST THING, but I quite liked her in this as Jenny the whoring pick pocket.

Role Playing

Mistress Malevolent was first to identify Wednesday's cast. They appeared together in THAT'LL BE THE DAY, "which coincidentally will also be the day that LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS doesn't get another fistful of Oscar nods, including Best Picture," she adds. "Your Oscar predix list looks ridiculous without it, cupcake."

Today's cast: Fred Gwynne, Michael O'Keefe. Carroll Baker, Tom Waits, Diane Venora, Margaret Whitton, Jake Dengel, Frank Whaley, Nathan Lane and the two lead actors, who shall go unnamed.

What's That Line?

Chris Molanphy of Briookly, N.Y., was first to identify Wednesday's dialogue. It's from RUSHMORE (1998), directed by Wes Anderson and co-written by Anderson and Owen Wilson. The actors are Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray, as the younger guy and older guy, respectively.

An angry guy in a store is making a point to some fellow customers, as the proprietor listens.