Hollyfield is a Dublin slum where the rejected, the derelict and social misfits live. Martin Cahill who grows up in this neighborhood is a product of his environment. Martin lives to fool the police, the church and the establishment; planning daring robberies, and thus gains the title "The General". After settling in a middle-class life with his family, Cahill makes the mistake of stealing paintings from the Rossborough House including the only Vermeer in private ownership. With public and political pressure increasing, the police mounted a surveillance operation involving the full-time services of ninety police headed by Ned Kenny, a man who admired Cahill but was determined to break him. Cahill and his men were watched and followed night and day. But it isn′t the police that ultimately break him, it′s the IRA. Cahill regarded the IRA as just another aspect of authority and defied them just as he did the establishment. The IRA shot him dead in the street on the eve of the 1994 cease fire.