Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Jim Sheridan, David Merriman
Starring: Vicky Krieps, Jim Sheridan, John Connors, Colm Meany, Aidan Gillen
The 1996 unsolved-or-was-it murder of French TV producer Sophie Toscan Du Plantier in a sleepy village in West Cork has fascinated true crime buffs for the last three decades. The killing has been the subject of numerous documentaries and podcasts, with even Oscar-nominated director Jim Sheridan helming a five-part true crime series, Murder at the Cottage: The Search for Justice for Sophie, which aired on UK TV in June of 2021. That same month saw the case brought to a global audience with the Netflix series Sophie: A Murder in West Cork. Now, working in tandem with co-writer/director David Merriman, Sheridan once again delves into the case with Re-Creation.
The prime suspect in the murder has always been Ian Bailey, an English journalist who lived in the area of the victim and had a sordid history of domestic abuse. However, a failure to produce substantial evidence, and some possible corruption on the part of Ireland's police force, An Garda Síochána, meant Bailey never stood trial in Ireland. Bailey was however found guilty in 2019 by a French court that tried him in absentia, but Ireland refused extradition. Bailey passed away in 2024.
Sheridan and Merriman's film imagines how a jury might have deliberated had an Irish trial gone ahead, and it's essentially a reworking of 12 Angry Men. Like Sidney Lumet's film it opens with the jury counting their votes, finding 11 votes of Guilty and a lone Not Guilty vote. The latter is cast by Re-Creation's Henry Fonda stand-in, Juror 8 (Vicky Krieps), much to the annoyance of the rest of the jury. If you've seen 12 Angry Men you'll know exactly how this will play out, that one by one the jury members will be persuaded to change their vote as they overcome various prejudices and exorcise personal demons.
Aside from a brief diversion to West Cork, the film keeps its drama confined to the jury chamber. As this is Ireland, it can't borrow the sweatiness of Lumet's film, but it certainly apes the frayed tempers and bigotry. The Lee J. Cobb role of the prejudiced blowhard who will be hardest to convince goes to John Connors as Juror 3, whose refusal to listen to any counter-arguments is mired in anti-English bigotry and a past experience that continues to haunt him.
In a curious way, Re-Creation is a reversal of Sheridan's In the Name of the Father, positing that perhaps an Englishman was stitched-up by the Irish police. Sheridan acknowledges that a degree of anti-English sentiment has always played a part in the Irish public's belief in Bailey's guilt, and it's the non-Irish jury members who are the first to change their votes. It then splits along gender lines, as the women turn to Not Guilty, which is a little hard to swallow in a femicide case.
Sheridan casts himself as the jury head, a devil's advocate who ensures everyone gets to plead their case. The filmmaker is excellent in the role, exhibiting the natural ease of a veteran performer, but we often feel like we're listening to Jim Sheridan presenting his personal opinion rather than that of his fictional character. Re-Creation suffers from some clunky dialogue as it tries to inform the audience of details of the case, but it's brought to life by the key performances of Sheridan, Connors and Krieps, though the latter ends up playing a much smaller role than you might expect of an actress of her stature. Oddly miscast is Colm Meaney as Ian Bailey. Meaney never speaks, but we hear Bailey's real voice in audio recordings, and it's simply impossible to put Bailey's very English voice to Meaney's very Irish face.
Re-Creation is a flawed but fascinating experiment, though as is the case with all true crime media there's an argument that its very existence is distasteful. Since 1996 practically everyone in Ireland has an opinion on this case, and since its recent prominence in podcasts and documentaries, so too do numerous true crime buffs around the world. But ultimately Re-Creation reminds us that no matter how many details and evidence we're exposed to in such cases, none of us really know anything, not even those 12 who spend weeks of their lives listening to evidence.
