Review: Bring Them Down
Chris Andrews hard hitting directorial debut shows the harsh and brutal reality of family feuds, internalised trauma, fragile male egos and life in rural Ireland.
Violent, dark, gritty, cold. All words that could describe this new Irish revenge thriller. The plot is centred around two sheepherding families. The tension between the two families has clearly been building for years and starts to boil over with news of two dead rams found on the mountain. The inherently Irish inability to properly communicate our feelings means that violence is not only inevitable but a key plot point.
We see the film from two different characters viewpoints. The first half is seen from Michael’s (Christopher Abbott) point of view. A man with deep rooted trauma after he caused the death of his mother many years earlier. Then we see things from Jack’s (Barry Keoghan) perspective. A teenager trying to find his place in the world whose misguided actions set off a course of events that there is no coming back from. While this helps create tension and gives you a better understanding of both sides of the story, it also leads to some confusion. There is nothing to indicate when this switch in perspective happens, it takes a few minutes to realise you’re actually seeing the same events again but from Jack’s side of things.
The cinematography is stunning. We are so used to seeing rural Ireland on screen as green fields and blue skies but here the landscape is cold, bleak and isolating with grey clouds overhead. This, along with the beautifully melancholic soundtrack, really set the tone for the film.
The real strength of this film is the acting performances. Colm Meaney, Nora-Jane Noone and Paul Ready all put in fantastic performances but it’s the two leads, Barry Keoghan and Christopher Abbott, who really stand out. Although Keoghan is probably too old to be still playing teenagers, he manages to convince you that he is a moody troubled teen who is easily lead in the wrong direction. The best praise I can give American actor Abbott is that I left the cinema wondering if he might be Irish. Not only can he do a convincing Irish accent, he actually learned Irish for the part and switches between English and Irish with the ease of someone who spent every summer growing up at the Gaeltacht.
Overall, this is a great film. It is well paced so there are no lulls and it manages to keep you gripped throughout. The plot is reminiscent of a western but it still manages to feel uniquely Irish. Definitely one to watch for all Irish film fans, unless you are particularly squeamish when it comes to violence against animals, in that case you may want to give it a miss.
7/10
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