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Why did Captain Browning...

posted 10 years ago by JyLx
4 replies | jump to latest

Spoilers for those who didn't watch the film.

Why did Captain Browning not kill James Quinn and instead let him go?

Browning had a steady IRA contact in Boyle, a reasonable and seemingly well meaning man. Boyle asks Browning to kill Quinn, an upstart who killed the British soldier in the beginning of the film. But instead of pulling the trigger on Quinn, he tells him to kill Boyle, and intends to enter into a working relationship with Quinn. Why would he do that?

Is Captain Browning himself a triple angent then? Is he working for the IRA? Or is he a straight unionist, but for whatever reason he would prefer to have Quinn in power over Boyle at the IRA? Is he simply playing one against the other and doesn't care which one lives?

I read an interesting comment in another thread on this board on the subject, by user billyblackwood:

"The Brit intelligence officers were not corrupt, maybe cold hearted though. They had a job to do as soldiers, and that was disrupt the IRA by supporting the younger and more reckless IRA members. The old guard IRA were not as radical, but much more organized and dangerous to the Loyalists. The Brits wanted to wipe the IRA problem off the map in northern Ireland. What better way than fighting a bunch of inexperienced kids? Unfortunately the plan backfired on them "Bloody Sunday 72" and the rest is history."

Finally, there's this one part in the plot sypnosis for this film's Wikipedia entry that offers its own opinion on a related scene:

"Sean hesitates, and within this time Browing's men arrive and Leslie manages to shoot down Sean; however, it is revealed that Leslie is, in fact, an IRA double agent and was responsible for supplying a faulty bomb to the Loyalists in the pub, and since Hook has witnessed him, he continues to strangle Hook."

I think that's just plain wrong, right? I don't think the bomb going off in the pub was intentional, or that was what Leslie intended. He wants to kill Hook because he witnessed the bomb, yes, but I don't see any evidence in the film indicating that Leslie is an IRA double agent.

[–] adriancb 10 years ago

My opinion is that his strategy was to increase the tension between the two factions of the IRA. If they are fighting each other, they would also be weakening each other.
A divided enemy is a weaker enemy.

[–] Pdx_Gold 10 years ago

This movie had a lot of strange and bizarre twists and turns. Made my head spin and get tired.

Most of these twists and turns seemed not very believable.

I guess yes, he wanted to weaken both IRA leaders, so that he could rise up and gain clout.

Who the hell knows.

[–] a_bates 9 years ago

My guess was that he realised that Boyle was a spent force and that Quinne would be a more valuable contract inside the new provisional IRA.

[–] !!!deleted!!! (41638798) 9 years ago

Exactly--as said before, Sandy Browning saw the young, volatile, less experienced loose canon young guys as the way forward, because they were less of a foe for Sandy and his team to fight against.

In the briefing at the beginning of the film, the CO tells the new squaddies that there is an old and new faction of IRA fighting it out for control. The rest of the film showed this tension between new and old.

Sandy and the powers that be saw the younger, less organized young men as a plus.

That's why Sandy's sergeant tried to strangle Hook to death. Hook saw Quinn and the other guys shoot his fellow squaddie and if he'd squealed on them, which he would have, Sandy's entire operation to nurture the wild young guys and get them to kill Boyle would have fallen entirely apart, because the Army and the RUC would have kicked in doors and dragged those guys out and into jail for murder.

So, Sandy's operation was willing to strangle to death a British soldier just to protect their big, long term plan.

BRUTAL!

After the squaddie foiled that kill of Hook by shooting the sergeant, we saw Sandy going to Plan B with the CO to manage the mess and get everybody like the Lieutenant and Hook to shut up about what REALLY happened--or else.

Sandy was saving his plan.