Whatever happened to Shergar? According to a new film premiered at the 52nd Cannes Film Festival yesterday, the champion racehorse was ridden into the sea off the Cliffs of Moher and drowned. The film, Shergar, is one of over 600 films seeking international distributors. Written and directed by Denis C. Lewiston, the film opens with the abduction of Shergar in February 1983 by armed men from a Co Kildare stud. In the film a Northern Ireland detective says the gang is a Provisional IRA splinter group. The leader of the gang is played in a highly mannered cameo role by Mickey Rourke.
Of all the stables in all of Ireland, we're told the horse was hidden on a Co Clare farm where it is cared for by an orphaned stable boy (newcomer Tom Walsh), who is not just obsessed with horses, but with Shergar in particular.
When gardai visit the farm, they are seconds away from finding Shergar when one garda is sprayed with excrement by a cow. Failing to receive the ransom money, the gang decides to decapitate Shergar and send its head to the Belfast Telegraph. Learning of this plan, the stable boy, who has bonded with Shergar, rides the horse towards Kilkee with the gang in hot pursuit. When finally tracked down, the boy rides the horse into the sea.
David Warner, Ian Holm, Andrew Connolly and Conor Mullen also feature in this pedestrian film, which is unlikely to make any impact in Cannes and stands a better chance of being picked up by television companies. Like the recent hit lottery comedy, Waking Ned, the Shergar film, though set entirely in Ireland, was shot on location on the Isle of Man, although it is much more sparing in its Oirish cliches than Waking Ned.
And there is a happy ending to Shergar. A coda set in 1984 suggests the valuable stallion had a tryst with a mare owned by the poetry-spouting Traveller played by Ian Holm, and their offspring is seen trotting behind his caravan in the closing scene.