This is an urban Irish crime-comedy, so between the slang and the sort of accents where Michael is pronounced MOY-cul, I'm sure I missed some of the subtleties of Perrier's Bounty. I think I got the gist of it, though, and what I understood was pretty good. I'm not sure if the cavalcade of colorful characters who sprint through this tight but sparse little story are reflective of true Irish self-image or if they're playing to the prejudices of cinema tourists. Either way, they're a fun group with which to spend a fast hour and a half.
Michael (Cillian Murphy) is a low-level denizen of Ireland's criminal underworld, which isn't so much under anything as sort of off to the side and behind the local pub. I always love how British films treat crime as though it was just another vocation. American thieves and killers are always cast as outlaws. With the Brits, it's like some people simply grow up to be gangsters the way others grow up to be mechanics or butchers or meter maids. It gives their crime stories a refreshing workaday sensibility.
Anyway, Michael owes a thousand Euro to his local crime boss, Perrier (Brendan Gleeson). He doesn't have it and faces the prospect of two broken bones if he can't come up with it in a few hours. Michael's also got to deal with the girl he clearly loves (Jodie Whittaker) getting strung along by her douchebag boyfriend. Then his estranged "Da", that's "Dad" to us Yanks, shows up in what appears to be one of Don Johnson's Miami Vice outfits after it's been dipped in ink and proclaims that he's dying. As if that's not enough, when Perrier's thugs come to collect, one of them winds up dead and that means Michael is facing a lot worse that a couple of fractures. With a 10,000 Euro bounty on one side, his melancholy but surprisingly violent father on another, his unspoken love's heartbreak on a third side and an unresolved conflict with his mother on a fourth, Michael is boxed in and needs a hell of a lot of Irish luck to get out alive.
About the only complaint I have with this movie is that the character of Perrier, though ably brought to life by Brendan Gleeson, never lives up to his advance billing. He's repeatedly referred to and built up in the viewer's mind. Then as soon as he shows up on screen, the character is sidetracked into this homosexual tolerance digression that's amusing at first but just becomes puzzling as it goes on and on. I can appreciate the dramatic logic of leading the audience's expectations in one direction and then going a different way, but the character of Perrier is left stumbling out of the gate and never finds his footing. This story needed a great comic but still threatening villain and Perrier's personality and agenda never congeal enough to make him that. There are too many times when Perrier is put in service to the Almighty Plot Hammer to make him a real enough antagonist for Michael.
As for everything else, it's a delight. Jim Broadbent is particularly good as an irresolute old dude forced into action by his looming mortality and there's a pleasant depth to the relationship between Michael and his father. You can feel the layers of history between them in their dialog and you can see in their behavior how the two are similar and how they're separate. There are also quite a few funny lines, though frequently a bit hard to decipher, honestly humorous situations and even some gratuitous nudity. And while this isn't an intricate plot, there are more than enough times when it heads in an unexpected direction to keep you glued to what's going on.
Perrier's Bounty is a clever and energetic piece of entertainment. If I could have figured out everything that was said, I probably would have liked it even more.
Michael (Cillian Murphy) is a low-level denizen of Ireland's criminal underworld, which isn't so much under anything as sort of off to the side and behind the local pub. I always love how British films treat crime as though it was just another vocation. American thieves and killers are always cast as outlaws. With the Brits, it's like some people simply grow up to be gangsters the way others grow up to be mechanics or butchers or meter maids. It gives their crime stories a refreshing workaday sensibility.
Anyway, Michael owes a thousand Euro to his local crime boss, Perrier (Brendan Gleeson). He doesn't have it and faces the prospect of two broken bones if he can't come up with it in a few hours. Michael's also got to deal with the girl he clearly loves (Jodie Whittaker) getting strung along by her douchebag boyfriend. Then his estranged "Da", that's "Dad" to us Yanks, shows up in what appears to be one of Don Johnson's Miami Vice outfits after it's been dipped in ink and proclaims that he's dying. As if that's not enough, when Perrier's thugs come to collect, one of them winds up dead and that means Michael is facing a lot worse that a couple of fractures. With a 10,000 Euro bounty on one side, his melancholy but surprisingly violent father on another, his unspoken love's heartbreak on a third side and an unresolved conflict with his mother on a fourth, Michael is boxed in and needs a hell of a lot of Irish luck to get out alive.
About the only complaint I have with this movie is that the character of Perrier, though ably brought to life by Brendan Gleeson, never lives up to his advance billing. He's repeatedly referred to and built up in the viewer's mind. Then as soon as he shows up on screen, the character is sidetracked into this homosexual tolerance digression that's amusing at first but just becomes puzzling as it goes on and on. I can appreciate the dramatic logic of leading the audience's expectations in one direction and then going a different way, but the character of Perrier is left stumbling out of the gate and never finds his footing. This story needed a great comic but still threatening villain and Perrier's personality and agenda never congeal enough to make him that. There are too many times when Perrier is put in service to the Almighty Plot Hammer to make him a real enough antagonist for Michael.
As for everything else, it's a delight. Jim Broadbent is particularly good as an irresolute old dude forced into action by his looming mortality and there's a pleasant depth to the relationship between Michael and his father. You can feel the layers of history between them in their dialog and you can see in their behavior how the two are similar and how they're separate. There are also quite a few funny lines, though frequently a bit hard to decipher, honestly humorous situations and even some gratuitous nudity. And while this isn't an intricate plot, there are more than enough times when it heads in an unexpected direction to keep you glued to what's going on.
Perrier's Bounty is a clever and energetic piece of entertainment. If I could have figured out everything that was said, I probably would have liked it even more.