ABSTRACT
In writing about Joe Lee and Frank Deasy's Dublin thriller, The Courier (1988), Kevin Rockett observes that the film's failure was in large measure the result of its inability to “overcome the visual handicap of the modest scale of Irish cityscapes” (Rockett 2001: 225). Rocket correctly identifies one of the film's major weaknesses—that despite being shot on location in the city, it lacks the “cinematic urban-ness” so characteristic of the kind of American thriller that the directors attempt to transpose to Dublin. However, the problem is not so much with the small-scale nature of the actual cityscape of Dublin but rather with how this is visualized and shot. Much of The Courier's characteristic iconography is achieved through the use of high and extreme high-angle shots, the camera looking down from an omniscient height at the city below. Typical of this style are the shots of the city seen through the windows of the high rise office of drug baron Val (Gabriel Byrne), shot from the top of Liberty Hall, Dublin's only city-center skyscraper. These shots actually exaggerate the small-scale nature of Dublin, rendering its built environment and its inhabitants insignificant while creating a cityscape that looks distant, depersonalized and static. The frequent use of telephoto lenses for the establishing shots of street life, with its traffic of people and vehicles, has the same effect of rendering the city depthless and devoid of personality.
