Tag: ireland

The Irish Connection

  By

★
“Drop this connection.”

Dear lord, this is a chore. From an opening conversation which unfolds mainly in quotes from Gone With the Wind, Scarface and other, better movies, it was painfully obvious for what writer-director Patrick is aiming. This is supposed to be a Guy Ritchie-esque caper, in which a parade of quirky characters from the underworld jostle for possession of… something.  Hilarity will surely ensue, as they trade foul-mouthed banter, get into and out of sticky situations and generally act in an amusingly inept manner. Except, hilarity most definitely does not ensue. I don’t think I broke into a smile once, with the whole concept being dead on arrival. Malta does look quite nice as a holiday destination though.

The heroine is agent Aureille Fleming (Coduri), though quite who she is an agent of, or why she is involved, never becomes particularly clear. The objects in question are some high denomination bearer bonds, and the film feels obligated to open with a caption explaining what these are. They have been stolen by a man known as The Priest, who flees from Ireland to Malta, and heavily-pregnant crime boss Alice (Spencer-Longhurst) wants them back. Everyone half-competent apparently being otherwise engaged, she sends hapless brother Rory (Robinson) and her husband Casper to the Mediterranean to retrieve them. Fleming – and, yes, it IS a painfully obvious 007 reference – is there to stop the bonds from falling into Alice’s hands, because… I don’t know. Maybe it was explained. I just don’t care.

At times this feels more like a fancy dress party than a film. People dressed up as nuns. People dressed up as clowns. People dressed as priests. This probably isn’t surprising, considering that it feels like Patrick is cosplaying as a film-maker. There’s little or no evidence to indicate he knows how to construct a coherent or interesting narrative. Instead, he proceeds by simply dropping in scenes which, I gueaa, are supposed to be “amusing”, without rhyme or reason. I called Aureille the heroine above, though there’s precious little to make her so. I presumed she is supposed to be the “good guy”, because there are no other credible candidates for that role, so she earns it by default.

I might have forgiven this had the action been up to a decent level. However, the cover is blatantly lying to us about this as well. I do not recall any moment at which she was on a motor-cycle, let alone wielding a gun. Admittedly, it’s possible my attention had wavered to such a degree I didn’t notice. I’m not sure I remember anyone being shot, and must have blinked and missed the helicopter. She throws a few lacklustre punches, and that’s close to the sum total of the action. A genuinely feeble excuse, it would not surprise me if this had been a tax write-off exercise. It’s the only way I can realistically explain the painful level on which this operates.

Dir: Danny Patrick
Star: Rosa Coduri, Flora Spencer-Longhurst, Jack Bence, Shane Robinson

The Hit Producer

  By

★½
“This hit is a miss.”

Made on a shoestring in Ireland, the nicest thing you can say is probably, this doesn’t look as cheap as it was. If only you could say the same for the script, which seems to be trying to be Guy Ritchie, only to end up nearer to Guy Fieri. It’s not a terrible idea, if rather stretching belief. Katelin Ballantine (Doherty) is a film producer, trying to raise funds for her latest movie. To that end, she is hanging out, unwillingly, with sleazeball businessman, Felim Shaw. What she doesn’t know, is he is deep in debt to local mob-boss Edmund Murren (Fleming). He kidnaps them both, forces Katelin to kill her potential investor, then threatens her family to make her continue in her new career as his assassin, alongside former friend and now Murren associate, Henry Furey (Kealy).

Two years later, she’s splitting time between that and her ongoing film production work. But her underworld identity becomes known to Murren’s rivals, and she is cut loose as a liability. With Henry her only ally, and the police now also closing in, Katelin has to try and survive, keep her family safe and stay out of the authorities’ hands. Only, none of this manages to mesh into a coherent, or even interesting, whole. For example, the film producer angle seems to exist purely for the purpose of the title, and doesn’t add anything of note to the main story. Given this set-up, it might have made sense had it been filmed in Los Angeles, or better yet, Hong Kong, where the overlap between the movie industry and organized crime is well-known. Dublin? Not so much.

As mentioned, I didn’t hate the idea. We used to know someone who… let’s just say, had a not dissimilar, sharp divergence between their day job and main source of income. But the execution here is just terrible, with the makers unable to decide what kind of tone they are aiming for, and even less ability to deliver it. It crams too many characters in, leaving none of them able to make an impact; I simply did not care what happened to anybody. Even Katelin is a botched heroine, in part because the movie skips entirely over the two years where she goes from sniveling wreck, whimpering by the side of the grave she has just dug, to a hard-nosed killer.

I suspect it either needed to give us that transition, or begin with the latter and perhaps fill in the back-story down the pipe. Instead, the film basically ignores what is arguably the most interesting element, in favour of murky betrayal and shenanigans among the Irish underworld. There’s little or nothing here we haven’t seen before, and almost always done better to boot. The action is nothing to write home about either, leaving my attention and interest to peak, more or less at an admittedly stylish opening credit sequence.

Dir: Kevin de la Isla O’Neill
Star: Michelle Doherty, Neill Fleming, Fergus Kealy, Susan Barrett

Black Medicine

  By

★★★
“The Hypocritic oath…”

I guess, at its heart, this is the story of two mothers. There’s Jo (Campbell-Hughes), an anaesthetist who has been struck off the medical register, for reasons that are left murky. She’s now practicing her healing arts on the underground market, from patching up dubious stabbing victims, to carrying out unlicensed abortions. Jo lost her daughter to meningitis, and has split from her husband. Then there’s Bernadette (Brady), a wealthy but no less murky character. Her daughter is dying, and in desperate need of a transplant. To that end, Bernadette has kidnapped a young woman, Aine (McNulty), with the intention of using her as an unwilling organ donor, and needs Jo’s help for the operation. But when Aine – who would be about the age of Jo’s daughter had she lived – escapes and hides in the back of the physician’s car, Jo is left with a series of difficult decisions.

Set in Northern Ireland, this is solid rather than spectacular. It has a good central performance at its core by Campbell-Hughes, who plays a complex and contradictory character. For example, Jo has a major drug-habit, yet remains highly functioning. [I’d never seen someone administer illicit pharmaceuticals through eye-drops before. Chris, apparently, was aware of this: I bow to her superior knowledge of such things, likely stemming from her life in eighties New York!] You sense the point that what she is being asked, and eventually ordered, to do has crossed a moral line in the sand, even if her recalcitrance is going to cause more problems. That’s because Bernadette is prepared to do whatever it takes to save her own daughter – something Jo was unable to do.

It’s the contract and similarities between the two women which keep the film interesting, both being utterly convinced their actions are morally justified, although the film-makers’ sympathies are clearly more with Jo. Less effective is the plotting, which feels far from watertight. Perhaps the biggest hole is the way in which Bernadette discovers Aine’s location, after the latter places a call to her boyfriend from Jo’s landline. Aside from being very stupid on Aine’s part, and not in line with the street-smart character to that point, I’m not sure I even know anyone who has a landline. Except for my father, and he’s 85. Jo’s ex-husband seems to exist purely to give Bernadette some kind of leverage, and generally, there are a number of unanswered questions whose answers I feel would have benefited the narrative.

Eastwood, making his feature debut, does have a nice style, depicting Belfast almost entirely at night, in a moist, neon-drenched way that lends it a certain exotic flavour. This would make an interesting double-bill with the similarly Irish-set A Good Woman is Hard to Find, which is also about a woman forced into an unwanted confrontation with the criminal world, by the sudden arrival in her life of an unexpected visitor. This isn’t quite as compelling, lacking the relentless sense of escalation, yet did still keep me engaged for the bulk of the running time, and offers an original scenario with effort put into developing both its heroine and the villainess.

Dir: Colum Eastwood
Star: Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Amybeth McNulty, Orla Brady, Shashi Rami

Wolfwalkers

  By

★★★
“Mononoke Hime, with potatoes…”

Ok, that’s a little harsh. But this very definitely does feel like an Irish take on Princess Mononoke, Hayao Miyazaki’s epic fantasy. This begins with the technical aspects, both animated films rejecting CGI in favour of a more traditional, hand-drawn style. In 1997, when Mononoke came out, that wasn’t so radical: the first fully CGI feature, Toy Story, had come out less than two years earlier. But in 2020, the dominance of CGI is such that Wolfwalkers seems a total throwback; after all, Disney went fully CGI after Winnie the Pooh in 2011. This is a very different style, and if you’re used to the hyper-realistic approach of Pixar, may take some getting used to.

The similarities don’t stop there. Both take place in medieval times, and have a settlement on the edge of the woods in a struggle with nature and its spiritual forces – in particular, as marshaled by a young girl. Another young person ventures into the woods, eventually befriending the girl, and the pair team up to prevent the destruction of the forests in the name of “civilization.” For rural Japan, read rural Ireland in the mid-17th century. For Lady Eboshi in charge of the modern forces, read England’s Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell (McBurney). This adds a touch of colonialism to the general ecological message here, with Cromwell seeking to subdue the wolves, partly as a demonstration of power over the local population.

There are other differences, too. The heroine here is Robyn Goodfellowe (Kneafsey), the daughter of hunter Bill (Bean), who has come to Ireland to control the wolf population. Robyn wants to help her father, but he’s having none of it. That doesn’t stop her from sneaking into the woods where she meets Mebh Óg MacTíre (Whittaker). She and her mother are wolfwalkers, whose spirits leave their bodies and turn into wolves when they are asleep. They also control the local native canine population. A bite from Mebh turns Robyn into one as well, but Cromwell has captured Mebh’s mother in her wolf form, sending her into a sleep from which she can’t awaken. Robyn tries to convince her father of the existence of wolfwalkers, and broker a peaceful resolution. Neither he nor Cromwell are having any of it, setting up a final confrontation in the forest.

On its own terms, this might have merited a slightly higher score. The problem for me was, it simply reminded me of the strengths of Mononoke. That was considerably more subtle about its message, making Eboshi a much more sympathetic character than Cromwell, who is positively cartoonish in both looks and demeanour. [Spoiler: I’m also fairly sure he wasn’t pushed to his death off a precipice by an Irish lycanthrope]. The approach here is  simplistic in comparison, especially the deeper we get into the story. which probably makes it more appropriate for a younger audience than adults. I still enjoyed it, but doubt there’s much rewatchability to be found here.

Dir: Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart
Star (voice):  Honor Kneafsey, Eva Whittaker, Sean Bean, Simon McBurney

A Good Woman is Hard to Find

  By

★★★★
“Hammer time!”

2020’s first seal of approval goes to this uber-gritty Irish film, starring Sarah Bolger, whose most familiar to us from Into the Badlands. While her GWG creds there are overshadowed by the likes oE Emily Beecham, safe to say Bolger makes up for lost time here. She plays single mother Sarah Collins, who is struggling to come to terms with the recent, unsolved murder of her husband. Barely managing to make ends meet, her life is upended when entry-level criminal Tito (Simpson) breaks in, seeking sanctuary. He has stolen some drugs belonging to top boss Leo (Hogg), and offers Sarah a cut of the proceeds if she’ll act as his safe-house. Very reluctantly, she agrees. Needless to say, it doesn’t go as they plan.

And that’s putting it very mildly. I won’t spoiler it, but there’s a reason she ends up visiting a hardware store, and weighing up whether an axe or a hack-saw is better suited for her “project” [the correct answer, it appears, is both…]. Yet, the character arc from mild-mannered mother who basically won’t say “Boo!” to a goose, into someone capable of going about with a bowling-bag of highly unpleasant content, is remarkably plausible. Because it’s almost all driven by fierce maternal love for her two children, one of whom has been traumatized into muteness by witnessing his father’s murder. Sarah will do anything to protect and provide for them, and as motivation for taking up a criminal lifestyle, it’s a far sight better than we got in the similarly themed Widows or The Kitchen.

It also does not soft-pedal its violence. The extended sequence where Sarah goes over the edge and becomes a killer for the first time, at one point almost teeters into farce with her first choice of weapon. But the further it goes on – to the point of death and beyond, the grimmer it gets. I was reminded of the line spoken by Macbeth: “I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” This is made clear from the opening scene, which sees a gore-drenched heroine taking to the shower, setting the scene for its subsequent savage tone. We only find out the source of the blood later, and it won’t be the last time it gets spilled.

It’s a spectacular performance from Bolger, portraying a woman who is ground down to almost nothing, before finding fate presenting her with an opportunity – albeit one which comes with a frightening cost in terms of her humanity. Yet her portrayal manages to take the audience along with the character on that journey. The rest of the cast pales in comparison, though it probably doesn’t help that non-British audiences may need subtitles for some of the dialogue; even I was going “What?” at some points, particularly for Tito’s lines. Still, neither that nor some suspiciously convenient skill with a firearm (likely a necessary contrivance) are sufficient to derail a thoroughly successful slab of Irish noir.

Dir: Abner Pastoll
Star: Sarah Bolger, Edward Hogg, Andrew Simpson, Jane Brennan

Demon Hunter

  By

★★★
“Hey-ho… Let’s go!”

Behind a remarkably generic and forgettable title sits an entirely reasonable slice of low-budget Irish action-horror. It’s clear creator Kavanagh knows what has gone before, and if the resources here don’t allow her to reproduce them on anything approaching the same scale, she knows her limitations and works well enough within them. Besides, who can resist a film that works a Ramones lyric into its dialogue? Taryn (Hogan) feels responsible for the death of her little sister, abducted and killed on the way home from school. She gets a chance to do something about it, when approached by the mysterious Falstaff (Parle) after her sister’s funeral. He reveals a secret world of demons and sacrifices – Taryn’s sister being one of the latter – and offers Taryn a chance for revenge, if she’ll come and work for him.

We don’t actually learn much of the above until some way into this. We start with the heroine stalking and enthusiastically decapitating one such demon, only to be arrested by the local cops. They’re peeved she won’t reveal where the severed head of the victim is located – not least because she insists this is necessary to ensure he stays dead. Falstaff, meanwhile, has not intention of letting his minion remain in police custody, and informs them there will be a fresh murder every 24 hours they do not let her go. For, it turns out, Falstaff has an entirely separate and significantly less helpful agenda with regard to Taryn, and has simply been using her towards his own ends.

The main asset this film has is Hogan, whom production kinda lucked into, after the original actress pulled out two weeks before shooting started. For Hogan is a third-degree black belt in Shotokan karate, with a slew of titles both national and international. The physicality her experience allows her to bring to proceedings can’t be learned at drama school, and bumps up the action credibility several notches. Given this, it’s a shame that we don’t get see more of her: after the opening head-removal, Taryn is then locked up in custody for the rest of of the first half, and we also have to go through the flashbacks explaining how she became a demon hunter. It might have been better for the makers to figure out whether they wanted to tell an origin story or subsequent tale: this is a little of each, and both likely suffer as a result.

The lazy comparison would be Buffy, but that can be applied to virtually anything where a young woman is battling supernatural creatures. Bloody Mallory is probably closer, with its heroine who is more surly and aggressive than frothy and ironic, and the dark tone here has echoes of The Crow as well. Kavanagh was working on the project for close to a decade before it reached the screen. The struggle to find funding is apparent in some rough edges, and her lack of experience in a story that can’t sustain itself for the full duration. Yet it’s still remarkably polished for not just a first feature, close to Kavanagh’s first narrative film of any kind, with her background being mostly in music videos.  I’m looking forward to seeing where she (and Hogan) might go from here.

Dir: Zoe Kavanagh
Star: Niamh Hogan, Alan Talbot, Michael Parle, Aisli Moran

Darkness on the Edge of Town

  By

★★★½
“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

darknessSo Confucius (allegedly) said, and it appears the same is true in the Irish countryside – though I’m still not sure if the film’s title is a Bruce Springsteen reference. In this particular town, the sister of Cleo O’Callahan (Regan), turns up dead on the floor of a bar bathroom, her throat cut. Worse yet, Cleo and her BFF Robin (Willis) come across the bloody scene, after being alerted by the police activity. Who was responsible? Francis Macheath (Monaghan), the traveler to whom the sister owed money? Robin’s stalkery brother, Virgin (Gleeson), who had a bit of an unhealthy obsession with the dead girl? Or is the truth even more unpleasantly close to home? It matters, because Cleo has no confidence at all in the local cops’ ability to solve the class, and since she’s an Olympic-level shot, has the capacity to back up her bold statements of revenge. The question is, at what cost?

If Italian genre entries are known as “spaghetti Westerns”, does that make this a “potato Western”? Because there’s a lot here that seems to be borrowed by Ryan from the genre; while the landscapes may be a lot lusher than the Wild West, there’s no less lethal threats to be found, and Cleo’s taciturn shooter, out for vengeance, is only about a cheroot and some stubble from being Clint Eastwood. The film is actually not very concerned with revealing the killer – that particular aspect is answered very near the beginning, though I’m unsure if this could be a misstep, since it drains much potential suspense away. However, I get the feeling Ryan is much less concerned with “whodunnit” than why, as well as the question of how many more will end up falling victim to the resulting blood feud, and the toll it will eventually take on Cleo. Even though, there’s certainly a case to be made that Robin actually the more dangerous of the pair, thanks to her talent for manipulation.

There were elements that reminded me of Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, which drew a picture of a similar teenage relationship, whose very intensity helped lead to tragedy. The two Emmas, of necessity, are leaned upon to carry a great deal of the picture’s weight, and they are both very good in their roles, especially when, as during the 10 minutes which form the nearly-wordless opening sequence, they are forced to act. Ryan is perhaps too fond of these artistic flourishes, which tend to distract as much as they enhance, and you also need to exhibit some patience with the film, working with its rural rhythms, which are some way from the genre standards. However, the reward is certainly worth the effort, with the settings and characters providing a fresh new twist on a familiar formula.

Dir: Patrick Ryan
Star: Emma Eliza Regan, Emma Willis, Brian Gleeson, Sam Monaghan