Blown Away

Blown Away is a 1994 American action thriller film directed by Stephen Hopkins and starring Jeff Bridges, Tommy Lee Jones, Forest Whitaker, Suzy Amis, and Lloyd Bridges, and follows a Boston bomb squad member pursuing an Irish bomber, who recently escaped from prison and is targeting the other bomb squad members. The film was distributed and financed by MGM, a studio which was in financial difficulty at the time. The head of the studio was former Paramount executive Frank Mancuso Sr. It was the first action film starring Jeff Bridges, who was by then a 45-year old leading man. Bridges said he was always interested in the genre, particularly as his father, Lloyd Bridges (who co-stars in the film) appeared in High Noon fighting Gary Cooper. Hopkins said that Bridges was his first choice to play the lead. "I was very lucky that MGM backed me up, because he doesn't seem to be the obvious choice for this kind of genre film." Plot Irish Republican Army fighter Ryan Gaerity escapes from his cell in a castle prison in Northern Ireland after turning a toilet into a bomb, killing a guard and his cellmate in the process. In Boston, Lieutenant James "Jimmy" Dove is a veteran member of the police force's bomb squad, on the verge of retirement and helping to train newer recruits. Dove hides that he is really Liam McGivney, a former member of a Northern Ireland terrorist cell. He had been friends with Gaerity, but when Gaerity tried to set off a bomb that would have killed numerous civilians, he interceded, ending in the death of his girlfriend (Gaerity's sister), and leading to Gaerity's imprisonment. Devastated, McGivney moved to Boston and took on a new identity, hoping to find atonement in saving others by defusing bombs. Only Dove's uncle, retired Boston police officer Max O'Bannon, is aware of his past and encourages Dove to retire early, feeling he has done his penance.