A Prayer for the Dying 1987

The film opens with an IRA team, including Martin Fallon and Liam Docherty, laying a roadside bomb for British Army Land Rovers. In a cruel twist of fate, a school bus overtakes the patrol and detonates the device, killing the children. The team bolts from the scene, and Fallon heads to London to escape the past, determined to vow to never take another life again.

In London, Fallon is approached to perform one last killing by Jack Meehan, a gangster who doubles as a funeral director, and his brother Billy Meehan. The target is a rival gangster, and the payout promises money, a passport, and passage to the USA. Reluctantly, Fallon takes the job and executes the hit, but a local Catholic priest witnesses the killing: Father Michael Da Costa.

Fallon visits the church to confess, hoping to secure the priest’s silence, and meets the priest’s blind niece Anna, who lives at the church with her uncle and begins to fall for Fallon. Yet Meehan presses for Fallon to kill the priest as well, warning that payment will wait until the loose end is tied up.

Fallon soon becomes a magnet for danger: the police, the Meehans, and the IRA, who send Docherty and Siobhan Donovan to London to persuade him to return to Ireland, failing which Fallon should be killed. Docherty hesitates at the last moment, adding a layer of tension to every encounter.

Billy Meehan eventually comes to the church to press Fallon, but Anna defends herself and kills him in a struggle inside the church house. Fallon disposes of Billy’s corpse in Jack’s crematorium, a grim reminder of the price of their lives.

Siobhan Donovan is tasked with orchestrating Fallon’s downfall, and she carries out the order to kill Docherty, removing Fallon’s ally and heightening the danger around him.

Jack Meehan then attempts to lure Fallon onto a boat bound for the USA, but Fallon sees through the trap and turns the ploy on Meehan’s men, stripping them naked and tossing them overboard.

Back at the church, Fallon returns to find Meehan attempting a final strike by bombing the church to kill the priest and Anna. The confrontation allows Anna and Michael to escape, but the explosion kills Meehan and leaves Fallon gravely wounded. In his dying moments, Fallon confesses his past to the priest, who grants him absolution, and Fallon dies at peace, having faced a life shadowed by violence and the longing for redemption.