09/02/25

The Cameo, Edinburgh

In the Wild West, as we all know, men are men and they have vengeance in their hearts. And naturally they always take the law into their own hands. In the case of Christopher Andrews’ directorial debut, Bring Them Down, we’re talking about the West of Ireland, somewhere near Athenry, judging by what’s printed on the side of a van. The story is set in the present day but you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s some time in the 1950s.

Michael O’Shea (Christopher Abbott) is a sheep farmer, stranded out in the middle of picturesque nowhere with his disabled father, Ray (Colm Meany), grumbling and snarking in the background. The two of them are constantly in dispute with their neighbour, Gary (Paul Ready), who is building holiday homes on adjoining land and seems to be spoiling for a fight. It doesn’t help that Gary is married to Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone), with whom Michael shares a troubled history (as we’ve seen in the film’s opening flashback). Gary and Caroline have a son, Jack (Barry Keoghan), who is tormented by the fact that his parents are in financial straits and appear to be on the verge of splitting up. He’s desperately on the lookout for ways to earn some extra money.

When somebody steals a couple of the O’Shea’s rams, Michael discovers them in Gary’s herd. He is at first reluctant to challenge his neighbours but, spurred on by his father’s angry tirades, Michael soon succumbs and sets off on a bloody quest for vengeance…

A more reductive view of the Irish would be hard to imagine. Every male character we meet seems intent on hurting, taunting or maiming those who get in their way and these people are seemingly unaware that the Garda even exist. Somewhere around the halfway point, Andrews’ script does a backward loop and offers a fresh perspective on what we’ve seen up to now, to indicate that things are not entirely as they seem, but it hardly helps matters, and I simply cannot credit one scene where Jack and his pal Lee (Aaron Hefferman) embark on an escapade so heinous it beggars belief.

There are other problems here. Keoghan is supposedly a teenager (Jack certainly acts like one) but unfortunately looks every day of his actual thirty-two years; and, while Abbott (an American actor, last seen undergoing supernatural changes in Wolf Man) makes a halfway decent stab at an Irish brogue and even delivers lines in Gaelige, this is thick-eared stuff that appears to offer an unpleasant subtext, suggesting that women shouldn’t be allowed to leave their men, as it messes them up.

Bring Them Down at least does what it says on the can. I leave the cinema wishing I’d skipped this film and looked elsewhere for a afternoon’s entertainment.

2.6 stars

Philip Caveney