"I Went Down" (15) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin
Oozing with freshness, imagination and visual style, the exuberant and scabrously funny Irish comedy-thriller, I Went Down, marks a potent cinema debut for its screenwriter, young Irish playwright Conor McPherson, and an immensely assured second cinema feature for director Paddy Breathnach after his underestimated Ailsa.
Worlds removed from the moodily atmospheric chamber piece that was Ailsa, the new film is a robust, wholly entertaining road movie directed with such flair and skill that it singles out Paddy Breathnach as the most exciting filmmaker to emerge from Ireland since Jim Sheridan made his cinema debut with My Left Foot nine years ago.
A movie abounding in genre references and throwaway humour, I Went Down is book-ended by references to its title - which it takes from the opening words of Plato's The Republic, as quoted at the beginning of the film - and it plays lewdly with those words in the movie's succinct final scene.
At the movie's centre is an engaging, opposites-attract story involving two inept minor Dublin convicts. Although they're dismissed as "a couple of clowns", they find within themselves the resources to prove their mettle under pressure. The younger of the pair is the misfortunate Git Hynes (played by Peter McDonald) who, it transpires, was innocent of the crime of which he was convicted. His girlfriend leaves him while he is in prison and on release he finds himself owing a debt to a dangerous Dublin gangster, Tom French (Tony Doyle).
French sends Git down to Cork to find and bring back a criminal associate, Frank Grogan (Peter Caffrey) and arranges for Git to be accompanied by the slickly coiffed Bunny Kelly (Brendan Gleeson) who reads cowboy novels along the way - when he's not impulsively over-eating or robbing people. Like Git, Bunny is an ex-convict who has been left by the woman in his life; unlike the quiet but resourceful Git, Bunny is one of those brash know-alls who really don't know very much at all.
Their misadventures confront them with double-dealing crooks, a counterfeiting scheme, a long-lost body, stolen cars and attempts on their lives - and trigger off a succession of hilarious jokes, visual and verbal. The snowballing complications which ensue make for boisterous, sharply scripted and expletive-littered comedy with a dark edge and unpredictable twists and turns.
The actors feast on McPherson's sparkling dialogue with Brendan Gleeson, the Irish Depardieu, on scintillating form in a long overdue, big-screen leading role, and newcomer Peter McDonald is impressively expressive and wonderfully deadpan as the aptly named but essentially likeable Git. The teaming of Gleeson and McDonald makes for inspired casting and the comic timing of their verbal sparring is a joy. Peter Caffrey has a ball as their loquacious hostage who boasts once too often about his BA, while Tony Doyle is perfectly menacing as the ruthless Mr French and Donal O'Kelly features strongly in a cameo as The Friendly Face.
Visually, the film is highly accomplished, with lighting cameraman Cian de Buitlear capturing a burnished beauty in its untouristy images of the Irish landscape and pulling off several dynamic frissons by shooting from the most unexpected of angles. The rhythmic editing by Emer Reynolds heightens the movie's energetic pace. The mood-enhancing original score is by Dario Marianelli, the Italian composer who scored Ailsa, and the eclectic soundtrack runs from Sergio Mendes to the High Llamas to Christie Hennessy to Revelino.
I Went Down is a gem of a movie to which there is more than meets the eye on a first viewing and it proved even more satisfying the second time around.
Hugh Linehan adds:
"Volcano" (12s) Nationwide
Like several of this year's blockbusters, Volcano's tag line is far more memorable than the actual movie. "The Coast is Toast" proclaims the film's poster, which pretty well sums up the subject-matter of this latter-day disaster movie, but might lead you (mistakenly) to expect a smidgeon of wit or intelligence. No such luck - Volcano makes the 1970s films such as Eathquake and Towering Inferno on which it is modelled look like works of rare craft and subtlety.
Tommy Lee Jones takes the central role, as the Los Angeles emergency chief charged with dealing with a volcano which unexpectedly erupts in the centre of the city, and Anne Heche is the seismologist who comes up with an idea to halt the rather unimpressive mayhem. But more spectacular pyrotechnics could not have disguised the fact that this is a singularly uninteresting and silly little film, which lost its raison d'etre as soon as its competitor, Dante's Peak, beat it to the cinemas last spring. A damp squib.
