When a callow, knockabout young Irishman named Gerry Conlon arrived in London in the autumn of 1974, nothing could have prepared him for the nightmare that was about to engulf him. By December he, his father and two friends were in police custody charged with the IRA bombing of two pubs in the nearby town of Guildford. Isolated, brutally interrogated and finally coerced into signing false confessions, the so-called Guildford Four, as they came to be known, were summarily sentenced to life imprisonment. Despite unceasing political activism to review the case, it was to be almost 15 years before Conlon's determined legal counsel, Gareth Pierce, stumbled upon the crucial, withheld piece of evidence that compelled the authorities to reopen the case and subsequently overturn the convictions. Working from Conlon's autobiographical novel, Proved Innocent, the award-winning My Left Foot team of director Jim Sheridan and star Danial Day-Lewis deftly juxtaposes the emotional density of a father-son relationship against the political degeneracy of a Briitish judicial system seemingly less concerned with human life than the terrorists it is hunting. Emma Thompson and Pete Postlewaite help anchor Day-Lewis' extraordinary performance. A potent, plangent estimation of the mechanics of a state sanctioned miscarriage of justice.
