Word: mcparlan
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...film focuses on the detective, McParlan (Richard Harris), who becomes a Molly himself, participates in their activities, adopts their life-style and turns them in to be hung. McParlan's evilness is particularly compelling because he is a conscious and full human being rather than the kind of one-dimensional Establishment caricature that we see so often in films. As a many-faceted human being, McParlan is far more real, dangerous, and frightening than the crackers in Easy Rider the cops in Medium Cool, or the fascists...
...acting of all the major characters is very fine. Sean Connery plays Jack Kehoe, the restrained, calculating, tormented leader of the Mollies and Samantha Egger portrays Mary, who rejects McParlan's love on finding out he is a detective. His relationship with her seems at best secondary and is probably unnecessary to the film...
...McParlan's inner predicament at the end of the film is the price paid by the Establishment for the continuation of his exploitation and suppression of the Irish laborers. The fact that they are able to concentrate their accumulated guilt on a single individual is witness to the spiritually and morally destructive nature of their motives. The elimination of the Maguires required a treachery born of a craving for money and power, the guilt steeped motives of twentieth-century capitalism. The "relevance" of this film has been denounced as an effort towards topicality- but the original script was in fact...
Violence in the coal fields was actually diminishing at the time when Pinkerton Agent McParlan, posing as a murderer on the run from Buffalo police, wormed his way into the high councils of the Molly Maguires. It was later charged that McParlan acted as an agent provocateur and deliberately whipped up bloodshed. The attacks also changed character: from reprisals against brutal or dishonest mine bosses, the Mollies turned to capricious, Mafialike assaults on anyone who offended one of their band...
Docile Wave. When McParlan threw off his disguise in 1876, after three years as a Molly Maguire, he had enough evidence to send 20 men to the gallows. By this time, the Mollies were in a bad way, denounced by their Roman Catholic priests, shunned by decent citizens, swamped in a new wave of supposedly more docile immigrants from eastern Europe. The trials were swift and of doubtful legality. No Roman Catholic was allowed on a jury, and the prosecution was headed by Mine Owner Franklin Gowen himself. Several of the condemned men were almost certainly innocent; one was hanged...