Written for RAF News March 2020

Douglas ‘Arm’ Armstrong (Cosmo Jarvis) is the muscle for a criminal family and father to an autistic son (Kiljan Moroney) – physically intimidating yet a sensitive soul – so when he is instructed to kill someone both his morals and loyalty are tested.

With a largely silent character capable of extreme violence at the centre, and cut to a dreamlike score, there is the feel of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. But the Los Angeles veneer and stylism is scratched away to reveal something rougher and grittier. Filmed on the West coast of Ireland, it holds onto the intimacy of its rural setting but brings out the desolation.

This place is populated by lowly thugs and drug-dealers run by the Devers clan. Connected through his manipulating ‘friend’ Dympna (Barry Keoghan), the mouthy nephew of the family, Arm has been adopted as their trusty pit-bull to carry out the dirty work. An ex-boxer who has perhaps taken too many hits to the head, he does as he is told.

There is a brutal darkness that sits behind the story, propelling it forward, but also a sensitivity taking shape in Arm’s moral crisis. Adapted from a short story the film expands the relationship between Arm, his ex-girlfriend and their son whose special needs have them looking at specialist schools across the country.

Cosmo Jarvis is captivating in this role, playing the simple brute with such restraint through his squinting eyes and tightly drawn mouth that he looks visibly constrained, torn apart by inner conflict.  He seldom speaks, but when he does, he does so softly with a sibilating lisp that is perhaps an indicator of his gentler nature, buried beneath his constructed masculine identity.

This debut feature from Nick Rowland is confident and accomplished. There are moments of well orchestrated action and tension building, but the most interesting scenes are those smaller exchanges that bring out the humanity of characters caught in the crossfire.