First of all, here are a plethora of deftly edited press snippets as they appear on the "PRESS" section of the official website for the film - The Front Line. A few of the reviews follow in their entirety.

Gleeson has delivered a terrific film that reminds us what big screens were made for and it deserves to be a smash...Bristles with freshness and cinematic sophistication...THE FRONT LINE comes with both a hard edge and considerable heart...Convincing performances and visually strong production values ensure the thriller aspect of the first half will bring you to the edge of your seat.
SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

David Gleeson's terrific thriller finds a story of heart-wrenching compassion in ongoing bloodshed and violence...THE FRONT LINE is shot with a compelling urgency, capturing a disturbing sense of a booming Dublin where violence may lurk just beneath the glittering surface...Ebouaney could act most Hollywood leading men off the screen and James Frain is arguably the most frightening baddie to appear in an Irish movie...Gleeson showed genuine promise with COWBOYS and ANGELS. With THE FRONT LINE he has arrived.
SUNDAY TRIBUNE

Cracking good Irish heist flick. There's never been an Irish film quite like THE FRONT LINE...A gripping heist movie with political undertones, it just happens to be set in Dublin yet it has a lot to say about the changing climate of our capital...Marks Limerick director David Gleeson as a serious talent to watch out for...Fine performances from the black cast members, in particular Ebouaney, make THE FRONT LINE a provocative thriller that deserves to be seen by a wide audience. This emotionally-charged drama remains one of the most stylish and original Irish films I've seen.
SUNDAY WORLD

Gleeson adeptly mixes the personal and the political, and the drama and social commentary, in his tightly wound thriller and he shows his flair for orchestrating action in a number of scenes...Dignified and expressive in the central role, Ebouaney heads a solid cast.
IRISH TIMES

A cinematic tour de force. THE FRONT LINE is an edgy snappily-paced thriller with substance. Gleeson's screenplay is remarkably original...Under Gleeson's direction, the stunning camera work of director of photography Volker Tittel and the sharp editing of Stuart Gizzard take the viewer inside Joe's head, conveying the psychological impact of a city like Dublin - which has never looked better onscreen - on his mind, subtly employing an arsenal of cutting, montage, flashback and dizzying shifts in perspective... The showdown between Joe and the gangsters on the Capital's Henry Street is destined to be enshrined as one of the most memorable action sequences of modern Irish cinema...THE FRONT LINE is graced by sustained acting brilliance...Eriq Ebouaney brings a stirring blend of mystery, energy and dignity to the lead role of Joe Yumba. The Leeds-born James Frain brings an edgy realism to the part of psychotic Dublin gang boss Eddie Gilroy. Believe me, you'll never look at an apple or a knitting needle in quite the same way again...Hakeem Kae-Kazim is debonair, articulate and absolutely terrifying...THE FRONT LINE is a character-driven, refreshing alternative to the shallow comedies, thrill-less thrillers and bum-numbing budget-chewing two hour-plus epics currently clogging up your local cinema schedules.
CORK, GALWAY, LIMERICK INDEPENDENT

There hasn't been a film like it made in Ireland before. It's original, dark, fresh, subtle, cerebral - the list goes on. Visually it looks like a Hollywood blockbuster but the writing isn't of Hollywood standard - it's much better. THE FRONT LINE is one of the best films I've seen all year. It's an edge of the seat thriller in the truest sense of the phrase.
LIMERICK LEADER

A bank-heist thriller with a twist, Limerick-born filmmaker David Gleeson delivers both thrills and chills.
EVENING HERALD

Ebouaney delivers an Oscar-worthy performance...About as far removed from the typical homegrown film as Greenland is from Hawaii. THE FRONT LINE avoids small town politics, parish priests and well-intentioned IRA men in favour of a far more contemporary and visceral affair...David Gleeson gives the kidnap/heist/revenge genre new depths...THE FRONT LINE excels both as a redemption tale and as an insight into the plight of Ireland's new populace.
METRO

Ebouaney is a fine actor...James Frain contributes a compelling performance as gang leader Eddie Gilroy. Gleeson and his cinematographer Volker Tittel have created a vibrant Dublin. The mean streets Joe Yumba has to walk down resonate with a palpable threat akin to cinematic depictions of New York, LA or London. THE FRONT LINE is certainly worth seeing.
VILLAGE

A bank heist thriller with a very distinctive twist. It's INSIDE MAN meets HOTEL RWANDA with a dash of ANGEL and it all sits together surprisingly well.
DAILY MAIL

THE FRONT LINE is slick, well lit and beautifully scored.
THE SUNDAY BUSINESS POST

Ambitious and daring...a hard-edged underworld thriller with a twist.
ENTERTAINMENT.IE

Politically conscious heist thriller will win hearts as well as minds.
SUNDAY TIMES

A well-constructed and thoughtful Irish movie.
DAILY STAR

Glossy direction and a superbly charismatic performance from Eriq Ebouaney save the day as THE FRONT LINE moves towards a heartbreaking denouement.
HOT PRESS

Ambitious in scale, wonderful cinematography, a cracking score and amesmeric lead turn from Eriq Ebouaney.
IRISH EXAMINER

Ireland hasn't produced a political thriller this good since ANGEL.
IRELAND ON SUNDAY

Director: David Gleeson. Starring: Eriq Ebouaney, Gerard McSorley, James Frain, Hakeem Kae-Kazim.

Details: Ireland / 93mins (15A). African refugee Joe Yumba (Ebouaney) arrives in Ireland and lands a job as a security guard in a bank as he waits for his wife and son to join him. Just as the family settle down to life in Dublin, Joe's world gets turned upside down when he is picked up on the street by a ruthless gang led by Eddie Gilroy (Frain).Knowing he works in a bank, Eddie forces Joe to be an inside man, and since the gang have Joe's wife and son kidnapped, he has no choice but to carry out the robbery. But Joe hides a dark past in Africa and knows a thing or two about handling people like Eddie Gilroy.

From the off, The Front Line sets its stall out in its attempt to do something different in the lacklustre pantheon that is Irish cinema. Ambitious and daring in its attempt to show the dark side of a refugee's life without once making any sweeping generalisations, Gleeson sets the story up quickly and shows how alone in a strange land these people are - and the fact that they have no one to trust if they run into any trouble. Once that's over, he then lets it play out like a hard-edged underworld thriller with a twist.

The problem is, everything happens a little too quickly and Gleeson might have slowed things down to build characters and relationships rather than show them in flashback later on, when it's too late, and we've already decided if we like or dislike those involved. Clunky in places and a little melodramatic in others, Gleeson still does a decent job on the obviously limited budget he was allocated.

The performances all do the job asked; Ebouaney and his gangster buddy Kae-Kazim, although believable, are a little heavy-handed, yet stand out from their Irish counterparts; Frain and Pure Mule's Garret Lombard are decent, but have too little to do.

Film Review by Gavin Burke
Reviewed on 18 August 2006

from entertainment.ie

Edgy, snappily-paced Front Line

Limerick-born film director David Gleeson has taken a sizeable artistic leap forward with his second feature film, The Front Line, which goes on general release this Friday, 25 August.

The Cappamore man's feature debut, Cowboys & Angels, released in 2004, was a touching rites of passage movie set in modern Limerick. The film charmed audiences locally and garnered awards and rave reviews worldwide. However, with The Front Line the director is in new territory.

The Front Line is an edgy, snappily paced thriller with substance. It tells the story of Joe Yumba, an enigmatic refugee from the Congo, who attains asylum in Dublin. He takes a job as a security guard to support himself and his family, fellow refugees Kala and nine-year-old Daniel. Joe's new life is turned upside down by gangsters who kidnap Kala and Daniel and threaten to kill them, unless Joe helps to access the vault in the bank where he works.

The movie jolts into high gear as Joe transforms from a quiet, enigmatic outsider into a man of action. He frantically attempts to save his family from harm, playing Irish and Congolese underworld elements off against each other, dodging the attention of the police and immigration authorities who are more than curious about this man and what sort of man he was at home in the Congo.

Gleeson's screenplay is remarkably original. He spent six weeks in the Democratic Republic of Congo in early 2004, meeting people who had been in similar situations. He also researched the ongoing conflict in the State, which has resulted in the deaths of as many as five million people, from horrific acts of brutality.

From its title and throughout the script, The Front Line explores a multitude of contrasts and conflicts: the ongoing conflict in the Congo; the conflicted state of mind of people from that warzone adjusting to life in a new, Western city; to the conflict between law and criminality; and the differences between Irish nationals and non-nationals.

But The Front Line is also a cinematic tour de force. Under Gleeson's direction, the stunning camera work of director of photography Volker Tittel and the sharp editing of Stuart Gazza, the film takes the viewer inside Joe's mind, conveying the psychological impact of a city like Dublin - which has never looked better on screen - on his mind. It subtly employs an arsenal of cutting, montage, flashback and dizzying shifts in perspective. The showdown between Joe and the gangsters on the capital's Henry Street is a particular highlight. It is destined to be enshrined as one of the most memorable action sequences of modern mainstream cinema.

The Front Line is also graced by sustained acting brilliance. Eriq Ebouaney brings a stirring blend of mystery, energy and dignity to the lead role of Joe Yumba. He is the very embodiment of 'grace under pressure', and even in silence, Ebouaney speaks volumes about Joe's inner turmoil.

Veteran character actor Gerard McSorley, so memorable as the criminal kingpin John Gilligan in Veronica Guerin, is on the right side of the law in The Front Line as the intense Detective Inspector Harbison, head of the Immigration Bureau. It's a brooding performance of a character haunted by his own traumatic past, who begins to empathise with the man he is pursuing.

The other central characters are by no means dwarfed by these towering star turns. The French actress Fatou N'Diaye is strikingly beautiful and quietly powerful as Kala, while nine-year-old Bryan Eli Sebunya, originally from Uganda and now living in Ballincollig, has virtually ensured his future in cinema with his performance as Daniel. Leeds-born James Frain - familiar from roles in Shadowlands and The Count Of Monte Cristo and television appearances in Prime Suspect, and other high-profile TV roles - brings an edgy realism to the role of psychotic Dublin gang boss Eddie Gilroy. Believe me, you'll never look at an apple or a knitting needle in quite the same way again!

Supporting the leading quartet are solid turns from Orla O'Rourke as Detective Susan Clohessy, Ian McElhinney as Gilroy's brother and, playing his accomplices, Garret Lombard, Feidlim Cannon and Maclean Burke.

Almost walking away with the film is Hakeem Kae-Kazim as the mysterious Erasmus. Like Joe, Erasmus is a Congolese immigrant, but one who has positioned himself as a key figure in the Dublin underworld. He is debonair and articulate and absolutely terrifying. Scarred by his experiences in the Congo, he does not play by the 'rules' of the Dublin gangland. In one scene, standing with Joe by the banks of the Liffey, he gazes out across the river and says, "We are the new Europe, my friend".

With its running time of just 93 minutes, The Front Line is a refreshing, character-driven alternative to the shallow comedies, thrill-less thrillers and bum-numbing budget-chewing two-hour-plus epics currently clogging up your local cinema schedules.

Ireland: Film: David Gleeson

David Gleeson has cinema in the blood, but the Limerick director hopes his politically conscious heist thriller will win minds as well as hearts, says Paul Byrne

The idea for the film came to the director David Gleeson as he was driving past a bank in Dublin. Outside the building stood a security man, whom Gleeson took to be African and whose suit did not quite fit. "He seemed somewhat out of place, but he had this great big smile on his face," says Gleeson. "I couldn't help but think that someone was going to give him the once over - this was a rough part of the city - call him a black bastard and ruin his day."

Driving on, he pondered what sort of life the security guard might have; what material deprivation he had escaped, what pressures may have impelled him halfway around the world to a city in the chaos of an economic boom, what was pushing him from his homeland, what was pulling him here. As Gleeson let his mind wander, he began to imagine a back story for the smiling guard. In the fullness of time, this seed of an idea took him to Congo, where, cooped up in a hotel room, he bashed out a script for The Front Line, the follow-up film to his 2003 debut feature, Cowboys & Angels.

A heist movie of a sort, The Front Line's vision of Ireland owes more to John Woo than to John Hinde. In it, asylum seeker Joe Yumba (the Cameroon-born French actor Eriq Ebouaney) is given a frosty welcome to Dublin by Detective Inspector Harbison (Gerard McSorley) at the immigration bureau. Claiming to be fleeing persecution from warring rebel factions in his native Congo, Yumba settles quickly into his adopted city. Having landed a job as a security guard at a bank, he is joined by his wife and young son, who arrive on a family reunification visa.

All seems fine until Yumba finds himself the reluctant inside man for a criminal gang led by the psychotic Eddie Gilroy (James Frain). All, however, is not what it seems.

Having made his breakthrough with the coming-of-age tale Cowboys & Angels, the Limerick-born Gleeson and his producer wife, the German-born Nathalie Lichtenthaeler, knew they had to strike while the iron was hot.

"I didn't want to do a genre piece," says Gleeson. "I saw The Front Line initially as a thriller, but Nathalie pushed me to lock myself in that hotel room for a week and write a script. I came out with this whole big story, the whole Congo thing. I did have to wonder where that came from, because it's like a film of two halves. The trick was to hide the seam between the two."

For anyone looking for convenient signposts, the two halves are Spike Lee's thriller Inside Man and Terry George's drama Hotel Rwanda. One problem for Gleeson was that this connection only became apparent in retrospect. "When potential financiers asked me to list movies that The Front Line might be like, I just couldn't think of any," he says. "I couldn't even list any strong influences for what I'd written."

Gleeson's influences as a writer and director are not so hard to trace. His grandfather opened up his first cinema in Limerick in the 1930s and his 75-year-old father still works daily in the family business, so it's hardly surprising that he pursued a career in film or that his taste is populist.

"When I was at my most malleable, movies were all around me," he says. "I was brought up literally in a cinema. My father ran four cinemas, and while the other kids were in nightclubs, I was working the projector or checking the tickets.

"Steven Spielberg, John Ford: I've always been drawn to the big film-makers. Gone with the Wind blew me away when I saw it on the big screen in 1981. [I] wrote down in my diary that night that I was going to combine my love of writing with my love of movies, and become a film-maker."

As a teenager in the 1980s, he banged out and directed several plays, notably Class Control. However, it dawned on Gleeson that there was little chance of "a young nobody from Limerick making a film in Ireland", and after failing to get on a film course, he moved to Scotland for two years to study communications.

While there, he took a step sideways: working on oil rigs in the North Sea, with a view to getting enough money together to shoot a short film. And that's where he spent the next seven years. "I was a twentysomething guy with money," he says, by way of explanation.

An ad in a movie magazine eventually prompted him to pack his bags in 1995 and enrol on a course at the New York Film Academy, where he met his future wife.

"It was incredibly tough trying to get even a short film made," says Gleeson. "Myself and Nathalie were often penniless, and then we had a new baby coming into the mix, too. For quite some time, all I could think about was the fact that my family were never keen for me to take this path. They knew just how tough a life this could be."

His first short, Feels Like Home, was completed in 1999 and was followed in 2002 by Hunted, thus preparing Gleeson for his first feature, the story of a shy civil servant who moves into a flat with a gay housemate. Even as Cowboys & Angels started garnering praise from the likes of Variety and The New York Times, the hard times continued.

"Most film-makers will take on commercial after commercial to keep themselves afloat, but I've only ever managed to make one. That sort of work just isn't in me, and that means money has often been incredibly tight. There was a better budget for The Front Line, so we actually got a decent wage out of it, but there have been plenty of times when a sensible person would have thrown in the towel.

"I also realise that if I were to make a shamelessly commercial film - something like Man About Dog [his fellow Irish director Paddy Breathnach's 2004 film] - life would be an awful lot easier, but I just couldn't make a film like that. It's not something I could feel comfortable with, because I want my films to say something. Entertain, sure, but give people something to think about on the drive home, too. That's more important to me than money."

Gleeson's determination to do justice to the back story he had created for his African immigrant saw him heading out to the Democratic Republic of Congo for six weeks.

"I had called around quite a few aid agencies, but pretty much all of them turned me down," he says. "You have to go through an aid agency; it's very difficult to go out there on your own. People have tried it and not come back. Insurance was a problem for everyone, too, but from the moment I first spoke with John O'Shea [director of the Third World charity Goal], it was all systems go. 'We can get you in where the killing is happening,' he told me. John doesn't mind what the medium is, as long as someone is talking about the situation. The film humanises the situation in Congo and I think John will be very happy with it."

Whether the various financiers behind this €2m European co-production will be happy with their investment will be determined over the coming months. If The Front Line does well in Ireland, its chances of a push abroad will be increased dramatically.

"It's tough for Irish films out there," says Gleeson, "and it's a very precarious position to try and survive as a writer/director in Ireland. You're at the whim of the finance minister with every budget.

"Something like Man About Dog certainly doesn't seem to travel at all. Every country has its local heroes, but I think The Front Line is a much more universal kind of story. It's great to be able to make a bank heist thriller with a strong political bite. It's the kind of film that you can still make in Europe, thankfully."

While the posters for The Front Line spring up around the country, and the critics start sharpening their pencils, the opinion Gleeson values most is still that of his father, Eddie. The fact that Cowboys & Angels didn't do all that well in the Gleeson family cinema, however, underlines how difficult it is to sell Irish films to home audiences.

"Every small country struggles to compete with the big Hollywood blockbuster," says Gleeson. "Having Cowboys & Angels - a film set in Limerick, made by a Limerick native - fail to connect with a lot of people in Limerick drove that point home for me. It made me realise that, to draw real numbers, you need a big name, a big marketing campaign or a big, easy-to-understand Snakes on a Plane kind of idea.

"Of course, I would love to work with a large budget and have a big name in there, too, but that's not really an option at this point. So I put all my energy into the story and just hope that good word of mouth will do the rest. Besides, I just don't think Eddie Murphy would look convincing as a security guard standing outside a Dublin bank."

The Front Line opens on Friday

24-Aug-06

'The Front Line', director/writer David Gleeson's second feature film is released across Ireland this weekend. Set in Dublin's underworld, the thriller unfolds when a group of Dublin gangsters cross paths with an African refugee, and live to regret it. IFTN talks to the director and his producer wife Nathalie Lichtenthaeler.

In 2004, David Gleeson's debut feature 'Cowboys and Angels' opened to good reviews and a positive response from Irish audiences, earmarking the Irish director as one to watch. Featuring a young Irish cast and set in Gleeson's home town Limerick, the coming of age comedy garnered awards in the US and Ireland and secured a limited US release. Two years on, Gleeson returns with his follow up film, 'The Front Line', a thriller set in contemporary Dublin where a notorious criminal gang kidnap the family of African refugee Joe Yumba and force him to become an accomplice in their plot to rob a bank. As the story develops, the tables dramatically turn on the gangsters when Joe's dark past is exposed and he reaps revenge on those who threaten his family and his new life in Ireland.

Fans of Gleeson's first project will be pleased to hear the team behind 'The Front Line' have once again produced a fine example of fresh Irish filmmaking. However, anyone looking for more of the same light hearted laughs will be disappointed, as Gleeson provides a complete departure from his debut pic.

The director says he refuses to be "pigeonholed", but when asked about the inevitability of comparisons with his earlier work he says: "Certainly if I'd made a film about a bunch of girls going out in Dublin, it could be compared and measured against Cowboys & Angels. This is a different film altogether. I don't want to be written off as a director who just makes one kind of film." He also vigorously rebuff's any notion of his film's association with the gangster genre. "This is no Guy Ritchie film," states the director "it's a thriller through and through".

In a similar way, there have been associations made with earlier films such as Terry George's 'Hotel Rwanda' and Michael Caton Jones' 'Shooting Dogs' which also deal with issues of African genocide. Gleeson explains his film is very different: "It's different in two ways. The first is that those films tell their stories from an African point of view, within Africa and within the refugee camps. Ours is very much an Irish story told within Ireland. The second is that 'The Front Line' certainly relates to the African genocide and deals with the same issues, but this is the aftermath, and a European point of view, where without the genocide there would be no refugees in Europe."

One of Gleeson's primary inspirations for the film stemmed from his own experiences living in Germany and encountering refugees in that city. Assessing his own struggle to adapt to life in a foreign country, he understood a refugee's situation could be much worse. "My wife is German, but I was an English speaker," he says. "Even simple things like reading a letter in the post, I had Nathalie there for me. Just thinking about any Africans there, on their own, it felt like that's where they were - on the front line."

Spotting an African immigrant standing guard outside a Dublin city bank, Gleeson began to wonder what the back-story of that person's life might be, forming the basis for his lead character Joe. He locked himself away in a hotel for one week and hammered out the first draft of his script. Researching the film he also spent six weeks in Africa travelling with GOAL director John O'Shea. Describing his time there as "a remarkable experience" he visited the Congo and Kenya, and spoke to a number of refugees who had witnessed massacres and experienced life in similar ways to his main protagonists.

In 'The Front Line' French born actor Eriq Ebouaney (Kingdom of Heaven) plays Congolese refugee Joe, with French actress Fatou N'Diaye and new Irish actor Brian Eli Ssebunya as his wife and son. British actor James Frain (Invasion, 24) stars as Eddie Gilroy, the head of the crime gang, and IFTA winning actor Gerard McSorley (Omagh) as Detective Inspector Harbison. Supporting cast features Orla O'Rourke (The Clinic), Hakeem Kae-Kazim (Hotel Rwanda) and Garrett Lombard (Pure Mule).

With a budget of €2.5million, the film was shot on locations in Dublin, Ardmore Studios and Hamburg in late 2005. The budgetary breakdown is divided between 60% Irish money, 15% German and the remaining funds from the UK and Sweeden. It took producer Nathalie Lichtenthaeler just six months to get the film green lit. "I always wait until I have certain number of elements in place, a solid script, director and lead actor," says the producer. "David went off to write this film, a thriller, so I was expecting the usual plot twists and climax at the end. So when I finished this script I found myself in tears, crying, I looked at David and I was like "where did this come from????" It was wonderful. I love that first moment when you finish a script that is just THAT good. You know instantly that you have something special."

"Then I remember it was January 2005, Eriq agreed to do the movie and by the end of Cannes 2005 I had most of the finance set. It was very quick and I was lucky enough to be the EFP Irish Producer on The Move that year and I met the Sweedish co-producer through that. It was very easy because the material and overall package was so good, people were just jumping to get involved."

Shooting the film Gleeson was reunited with old 'Cowboys and Angels' crew such as German cinematographer Volker Tittel, Irish costume designer Grania Preston and Irish production designer Jim Furlong. A condition of support from the Hamburg Film Fund was that some scenes were to be shot on location in Hamburg. Those scenes blend seamlessly with the Irish footage, but was this something the production team found hard to deal with? "We had an experienced crew and that was vitally important," says Lichtenthaeler. "Films are shot in various different locations all the time, and sometimes they are set outside the country so it was nothing out of the ordinary. It was expensive, travelling and moving all the equipment, but it was something we had to do, so we did it."

Both Gleeson and Lichtenthaeler describe their film as a "spectacular movie" and urge Irish cinemagoers to take the opportunity to see a new and exciting Irish story told on the big screen. 'The Front Line' is released nationwide on 35 screens through distributor Buena Vista International Ireland. They see themselves as independent filmmakers who, with their second, wish to build upon the successes of their first feature. With some positive reviews already in the can, this looks to be an attainable ambition.

But what next for the filmmaking couple? They show no signs of slowing down as David plans to retreat back to his hotel room to pen another script and Nathalie is working on a number of other projects with other directors. "This is what we do," says Lichtenthaeler. "We certainly want to keep working and keep making movies that people enjoy."

'The Front Line' is released across Ireland from the 25th of August 2006.

'The Front Line' is an Irish/German/Sweedish/UK co-production funded by the Irish Film Board, Fim Foerderung Hamburg. Film I Vast, Eurimages, Highpoint Films and Scion. Distribution in Ireland is by Buena Vista International Ireland.

The Front Line

There's a whiff of sensationalist tabloid headlines emanating from The Front Line (15A), in which Congolese immigrant Joe Yumba (Eriq Ebouaney), now settled in Dublin, finds himself blackmailed by a gang who need insider information in order to rob the bank where he works as a security guard. Happily, writer/director David Gleeson (Cowboys and Angels) is far more concerned with the nuances of human behaviour under extreme pressure than he is with generating headlines. Better still, Ebouaney is a fine actor who shoulders with ease the delicate burden of expressing such subtleties.

Unfortunately, given that The Front Line is a relatively big-budget affair by Irish standards, its overall impact is disappointing. James Frain contributes a compelling performance as gang leader Eddie Gilroy but far too many elements stretch credibility to breaking point, the clumsiness of the bank break-in being the most obvious case in point. Characters pop up when required to shunt the story along and then disappear for the rest of the movie, while other characters appear to be there simply to keep the gender balance on an even keel. The dialogue too is clunky, the contributions from the minor characters are often below par, and the story is rather predictable – although Gleeson does undermine audience perceptions with a revelation near the end, the twist comes too late to salvage what has gone before.

On the positive side, Gleeson and his cinematographer, Volker Tittel, have created a vibrant Dublin. By utilising its dark back-alleys and less salubrious environs, via a judicious use of lighting, the mean streets Joe Yumba has to walk down resonate with a palpable threat akin to cinematic depictions of New York, LA or London. For that, and for Ebouaney's performance, The Front Line is certainly worth seeing.

from the "About the Film" section of the official "Front Line" website, here's what James Frain himself has to say about his Dublin accent in the film:

Frain had to work hard with the help of a dialogue coach to perfect Gilroy's hard edged Dublin accent. "It was very difficult for me" he says. "I had done a Northern accent in NOTHING PERSONAL in 1996 and that sound kept ringing in my ears. The urban Dublin dialect is very specific and I hadn't heard it much before. I had some help at the beginning from the excellent Brendan Gunn and also from another very good voice coach and as the shoot went on I got more confident."

IMDB link for The Front Line