Film Review: Baltimore is an accurate telling of Rose Dugdale's life - but far from compelling

"Imogen Poots is compelling as the complex firebrand, and she gets strong support from Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as the veteran IRA volunteer, but their performances are undermined by an occasionally clunky script..."

Imogen Poots with Lewis Brophy and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor in Baltimore

• Baltimore 
• ★★★☆☆
• Cinema release

Based on a true story, Baltimore (15A) opens in 1974 with English heiress Rose Dugdale (Imogen Poots) leading an IRA raid on Russborough House, stealing a host of paintings that she plans to ransom to secure the release of IRA prisoners being held in Britain.

When the gang — which includes Dominic (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) and Rose’s lover Eddie (Jack Meade) — retreats to a rural hideout, the story begins flashing back to Rose’s earlier years to explain how this aristocratic scion embarked on a career of social protest and political agitation that led her to joining the IRA.

It’s a fascinating story that begins with the young Rose being revolted when she is ‘blooded’ after her first fox hunt, a revulsion that sets in train her rejection of everything her parents and their class represent.

Imogen Poots leads the cast of Baltimore

Imogen Poots is compelling as the complex firebrand, and she gets strong support from Vaughan-Lawlor as the veteran IRA volunteer, but their performances are undermined by an occasionally clunky script from writer-directors Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy as they seek to flesh out the documented facts.

It may well be historically accurate that the class warriors of the early 1970s were po-faced activists who communicated in Marxist clichés, but fidelity to the truth doesn’t necessarily make for compelling drama.