RAW mentions this movie.

Sorry, my low-bandwidth internet connection is not suitable for youtube videos, so my comment may not relate to that video.

I hadn't seen this film before, (to the best of my recollection), but it is one of the last Sean Connery films I have not seen, and today was its day.

It was entertaining to watch, set in the days when there were few restrictions on travel (no visas, passports, etc.), about a decade after the US Civil War.
There seemed to be no form of identification papers, so anyone could be who they say are, or not, which is part of the heart of the movie.
Unless it was because we saw a brawl and/or a bashing, there were no such thing as boxing rules - fight to win. Period. And the rugby game was played about the same way, not up to contemporary rule standards either (looked a lot like American tackle football, without pads or helmets, plus some extra bashings).

There were a lot of almost inside-jokes about where people were from, and how they could be identified by their mannerisms and speech, and some old(er?) names that may have been contemporary to the period portrayed, as filmed in 1970. One example is "peeler"; I came to realize those seemed to be the mine police, which were to all intents THE police back in those days. Even the Captain referred to *his men* as recruited hoodlums once. I do wonder if that was a derogatory reference to them being Irish (potatoe peelers)?

As a rule, there were few scenes inside the mine where the lighting was not almost daylight bright, completely unrealistic, but typical for a film in the 1970s. On just a few occasions, as the miners leave or enter the mine, you get a true sense of how dark the mines really were as they blow out the oil lamps, or light them again, and as the miners ride the trolley into the darkness, and all you see is the oil lamps on their hats. That made a striking image.

Safety rules? We don need no stinkin rules...
Well, Richard's character was pretty much caught in a blasting on his first trip down into the mine, and was so startled his lamp (on his hat) blew out as he whipped around behind a wall. The other miners just walked around like that was nothing unusual while he crouched down in obvious fright. There was no in/out board shown in the movie, so one is left to wonder if there was any attendance or checks of men coming out actually done. The "peelers", armed with rifles, seemed to always surround the mine entrance at the start of the day, but had no clipboards, and did not always appear around the mine entrance at the end of the day. The miner trolleys and the coal carts were all connected and moved by a single rope, not a chain. Even the main actors worked and exited the mine, apparently so covered in coal dust only their eyes and open mouths were not black... Lots of the miners frequently coughed and spit... (think black lung disease).
I don't know when the boxframe supports came into use, but the entire mine seemed void of them, just single wood logs, somewhat randomly placed appeared to be the only supports used. The coal seams also appeared to be mined out from between other rock layers, and those layers were also braced with wooden logs, cut to size, and wedged into place.

One scene showed a VERY long line of what appeared to be miners all in a line, most sitting or lying down as the line didn't seemed to be moving. The camera follows that into the paymasters office, (Aha! Payday! Remember, no checks, no credit/debit cards, barely any paper money ever shown.) Then you will understand the old song line "I owe my soul to the company store". The paymaster gets the miner's name, then reads off how many carts of coal the man had, and how much he earned, THEN starts on a list of deductions. It seems each man is charged for the oil for the lamps, the tools he uses , (pick, shovel, sledge hammer, etc.), repairs to drill bits, and on, and on. Richard's character comes up with a final tally of $0.24 for his pay. We already heard his room and board is more than a dollar ($1.25 I think). He walks away to the pub, and sulks for a long while... Eventually he buys a beer.

Then the serious cat and mouse games begin. Richard is a Detective, working for the mine, and he is supposed to find out who belong to the Molly Maguires, responsible for a lot of *bad things*, including sabotage and attacks on the guards. The "peelers" are responsible for beating some of the miners as well as arbitrary firings.

Several times, Richard's character says, "I am who you think I am"... From the first, no one trusts him as a miner, because he has soft and smooth hands. By this time, he has proven himself as a hard worker, and some of the miners are beginning to warm up to him.


You have to wonder if there are any good guys in the entire place, and you will decide for yourself if that is true.