IRELAND on FILM:

Hear My Song 

(1991) 104 minutes

Peter Chelson’s film is loosely based on Josef Locke, a romantic tenor who was renowned in 1950s Britain and Ireland until he had to flee the UK, one step ahead of Inland Revenue.

In the Irish community of 1980s Liverpool, Mickey O’Neill is a less-than-scrupulous impresario struggling to keep his nightclub afloat. After a series of particularly lame acts, Mickey books a “Mr. X” impersonator, letting on that he is Josef Locke. The stunt draws a huge amount of publicity but results in a disaster that ends his career and his relationship with his girlfriend Nancy.

In need of personal and professional redemption, Mickey returns to Ireland to find the real Josef Locke and bring him out of seclusion––regardless of whether he is a fugitive. Adrian Dunbar and Tara Fitzgerald play and an unctuous Mickey and exasperated Nancy, but it is character actor Ned Beatty who brings a roguish charm to the reclusive Jo Locke, while David McCallum plays an obsessive tax-man who has waited thirty years to bag him.

BE ADVISED- This film is rated R, with smoking, drinking, profanity, sexuality, nudity, a punch in the nose, a dangle over a cliff, and one very bad Sinatra act.