Fifty shades star to play lead role in film based on mullingar mans jadotville book

By Eilís Ryan

Belfast actor Jamie Dornan is in February due to hit the screens of cinemas worldwide wielding whips and chains as sexual sadist, Christian Grey, in the film adaptation of the EL James bestseller, Fifty Shades of Grey.
But straight after, he will be laying down his whips and taking up arms, as he takes on the lead role in a film based on the book The Siege of Jadotville, written by Mullingar man, Declan Power.
Dornan has been chosen to play the role of Commandant Pat Quinlan, who was head of the 150-strong Irish army company that held off attacks by 3,000 Katangese-led troops for six days at Jadotville. The 'A Company’ was made up mainly of soldiers from Custume Barracks in Athlone, Columb Barracks in Mullingar, and from barracks in Galway and Donegal, all deployed to the Congo on UN duty.
Ambushed while attending an open-air Mass, and cut off from back-up, the soldiers held out against their attackers until their ammunition and supplies ran out, and they had to surrender. They were then held captive for a month.
The story was detailed in 2004 by Declan Power, a former soldier, who has since then worked as a journalist, and who is now a security and defence analyst.
The option for the rights to Mr Power’s book was bought by Richie Smyth, director of Parallel Films.
The script is being written by Kevin Broadbin, and an allocation of funding for production of the project has been made to Parallel Films by the Irish Film Board.
Pleased to hear that the film is to go into production, with plans to film in both this country and South Africa, Mr Power revealed this week that he isn’t involved in the production: “I think people think that you, as the writer, are at the centre of it, but when they buy the rights, what they’re buying is the legal right to use your book for the dramatisation.”
He is glad that the options were bought by a company that is planning to retain the Irish dimension, rather than turning out a fictionalised version with, perhaps, the Irish role being changed to that of American troops.
“The real story itself has plenty of opportunity to bring a focus on drama and action and intrigue,” he says, adding that during his year and a half researching the book, he discovered there were a lot of conspiracy theories about what had happened – and a lot of misunderstanding of how serious was the plight of the captured soldiers, many of whom were very young at the time.
What was upsetting for so many was the fact that on their return, their experience was downplayed by the army here, and they were unfairly disparaged for surrendering – despite their success in fending off for so long the numerically stronger force attacking them, until they were left without supplies or ammunition.
The reaction of the army at home, he says, left some of those involved in the siege “bruised, psychologically”, and they were upset by unfair criticism of their commanding officer, whose strategic actions had, in fact, seen to it that none of the Irish were killed.
“A lot of time was spent sorting what might be legend from fact,” he says.