Collins' motive

I find a problem with this film to be that it doesn't make any real attempt to explain why the IRB (I don't even think that term was ever used, although I may be wrong) are fighting this war against Britain.

At the start we are simply told that Ireland is a British colony (technically it was a part of the United Kingdom but the people had so little say in affairs it might as well have been a colony) and then we are immediately shown the Easter Rising without any context whatsoever, not even the First World War (which is also never mentioned as far as I can remember). We are also constantly shown Irish policemen and agents working for the British government and apparently totally comfortable in their jobs, suffering no ill-effects of being ruled by Britain.

People have called this a hagiography of Collins; I argue the opposite. While Collins will remain a controversial figure and we're not going to reach a consensus here on him, I do think the film fails utterly to explain why he at least believed he was doing the right thing - a brief explanation of the crisis over the Third Home Rule Bill, Redmond's injunction that Irishmen should join the British army and the major opposition to devolution (to use a modern term) in the north would have given some much-needed context.

Box falls out of the sky, man falls out of the box, man eats fish custard.