The best Brendan Gleeson’s thriller movies
Brendan Gleeson is an Irish actor. His best-known films include the Harry Potter films, Braveheart, Gangs of New York, 28 Days Later, and the role of Michael Collins in The Treaty. He won an Emmy award in 2009 for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in the film Into the Storm.
Gleeson was born in Dublin, Ireland and has described himself as having been an avid reader as a child. After leaving school for a short while, he worked for two years in an office with a health board. He then graduated from University College Dublin and went on to Drama School in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Just after completing the 3 Year Acting Drama Course at RADA, Gleeson built a very respectable CV at the Royal National Theatre, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, and the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. Gleeson became known for his tremedous stage presence, particularly while performing in such works of William Shakespeare as King Lear, Richard III, and Hamlet.
Gleeson started his film career at the age of 34. He first came to prominence in Ireland for his role as Michael Collins in The Treaty a television film broadcast on RTÉ One, and for which he won a Jacob's Award in 1992. Gleeson has subsequently acted in more than 60 films including Braveheart, I Went Down, Michael Collins, Gangs of New York, Cold Mountain, 28 Days Later, Troy, Kingdom of Heaven, Lake Placid, Artificial Intelligence: AI and The Village. He won critical acclaim for his performance as Irish gangster Martin Cahill in John Boorman's 1998 film The General.
Gleeson lives in Malahide, County Dublin. He is a talented fiddle player, with an interest in Irish folklore. He can be found from time to time playing at traditional music seisiúins in Hughes' pub in Chancery Street in Dublin 7. His brother, Barry Gleeson, is a well-known singer in An Góilín traditional singers' club, and his son Domhnall is an actor. Gleeson is known for his love of football and recounts tales of attempting to get a clear radio reception so he could listen to how his team, Aston Villa, were faring on a Saturday.
The Village
6.6/10
When a willful young man tries to venture beyond his sequestered Pennsylvania hamlet, his actions set off a chain of chilling incidents that will alter the community forever.
28 Days Later
7.5/10
Twenty-eight days after a killer virus was accidentally unleashed from a British research facility, a small group of London survivors are caught in a desperate struggle to protect themselves from the infected. Carried by animals and humans, the virus turns those it infects into homicidal maniacs -- and it's absolutely impossible to contain.
Mission: Impossible II
6.1/10
With computer genius Luther Stickell at his side and a beautiful thief on his mind, agent Ethan Hunt races across Australia and Spain to stop a former IMF agent from unleashing a genetically engineered biological weapon called Chimera. This mission, should Hunt choose to accept it, plunges him into the center of an international crisis of terrifying magnitude.
Stonehearst Asylum
6.8/10
A Harvard Medical School graduate takes a position at a mental institution and soon becomes obsessed with a female mental patient, but he has no idea of a recent and horrifying staffing change.
Safe House
6.7/10
A dangerous CIA renegade resurfaces after a decade on the run. When the safe house he's remanded to is attacked by mercenaries, a rookie operative escapes with him. Now, the unlikely allies must stay alive long enough to uncover who wants them dead.
In the Heart of the Sea
6.9/10
In the winter of 1820, the New England whaling ship Essex is assaulted by something no one could believe—a whale of mammoth size and will, and an almost human sense of vengeance.
Green Zone
6.8/10
During the U.S.-led occupation of Baghdad in 2003, Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller and his team of Army inspectors are dispatched to find weapons of mass destruction believed to be stockpiled in the Iraqi desert. Rocketing from one booby-trapped and treacherous site to the next, the men search for deadly chemical agents but stumble instead upon an elaborate cover-up that threatens to invert the purpose of their mission.
Lake Placid
5.8/10
When a man is eaten alive by an unknown creature, the local Game Warden teams up with a paleontologist from New York to find the beast. Add to the mix an eccentric philanthropist with a penchant for "Crocs", and here we go! This quiet, remote lake is suddenly the focus of an intense search for a crocodile with a taste for live animals...and people!
The Raven
6.4/10
A fictionalized account of the last days of Edgar Allan Poe's life, in which the poet is in pursuit of a serial killer whose murders mirror those in the writer's stories.
Live by Night
6.4/10
A story set in the Prohibition Era and centered on a group of individuals and their dealings in the world of organized crime.
Michael Collins
7.1/10
Michael Collins plays a crucial role in the establishment of the Irish Free State in the 1920s, but becomes vilified by those hoping to create a completely independent Irish republic.
The Tailor of Panama
6.1/10
A British spy is banished to Panama after having an affair with an ambassador's mistress. Once there he makes connection with a local tailor with a nefarious past and connections to all of the top political and gangster figures in Panama. The tailor also has a wife, who works for the Panamanian president and a huge debt. The mission is to learn what the President intends to do with the Canal.
The Guard
7.3/10
When a small-town Irish cop with a crass personality is partnered with a straight-laced FBI agent to bust an international drug-trafficking ring, they must settle their differences in order to take down a dangerous gang.
Turbulence
5/10
On a flight transporting dangerous convicts, murderer Ryan Weaver manages to break free and cause complete chaos throughout the plane. As various people on board fall victim to Weaver, it is ultimately down to flight attendant Teri Halloran to keep the aircraft from crashing, with on-ground support from an air traffic controller. While Halloran struggles to pilot the plane, Weaver continues to terrorize the surviving members of the crew.
The Company You Keep
6.4/10
A former Weather Underground activist goes on the run from a journalist who discovers his identity.
Alone in Berlin
6.5/10
Berlin in June of 1940. While Nazi propaganda celebrates the regime’s victory over France, a kitchen-cum-living room in Prenzlauer Berg is filled with grief. Anna and Otto Quangel’s son has been killed at the front. This working class couple had long believed in the ‘Führer’ and followed him willingly, but now they realise that his promises are nothing but lies and deceit. They begin writing postcards as a form of resistance and in a bid to raise awareness: Stop the war machine! Kill Hitler! Putting their lives at risk, they distribute these cards in the entrances of tenement buildings and in stairwells. But the SS and the Gestapo are soon onto them, and even their neighbours pose a threat.
Dark Blue
6.6/10
Set during the Rodney King riots, a robbery homicide investigation triggers a series of events that will cause a corrupt LAPD officer to question his tactics.
A Further Gesture
5.8/10
Dowd, an IRA prisoner in the H-blocks, is gloomily facing his sentence, until he joins a comrade in a risky escape. Dowd begins a new life in New York, but he might as well be in prison again - until he strikes up a friendship with co-worker Tulio and gets to know his close group of Guatemalan exiles.
Pursuit
5.2/10
Pursuit is a modern take on Irish mythology, adapting the legend of Diarmuid and Gráinne and transforming it into a road movie and gangster thriller for a contemporary audience.
