I WENT DOWN
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Artisan Films Director: Paddy Breathnach Writer: Paddy Breathnach Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Peter McDonald, Tony Doyle, Peter Caffrey
Some Irish movies travel well across the Atlantic, intriguing Americans of all ethnic groups as much as they interest the folks from Dublin to Galway. "The Boxer" is just such a picture. On the other hand there are some movies whose humor is so quiet, so inaccessible, that you wonder whether they were made for anyone's enjoyment. If "I Went Down" and "Bulworth" opened at the same time in the theater of Cork and Spigo, which picture do you think the townspeople would see?
"I Went Down" is meant to be taken as a cute illustration of the Irish gift for gab, but the language is far from the poetry of Sean O'Casey and is no match for the crisp dialogue of a Jim Sheridan. A mafia-style road comedy, the story is like a theater piece for two with assorted oddball characters thrown in to expand the dimensions. Git (Peter McDonald), a handsome, young, taciturn lad whose girl friend left him during his six-year term in jail, roughs up a couple of gangsters who are about to crush the fingers of his friend Anto (David Wilmot). The gang leader, Tom French (Tony Doyle) will forgive him and release Anto if Git will gather up some money for him and kidnap a man who has had an affair with French's wife. Bunny (Brendan Gleeson) is assigned to watch Git, and during their time on the road this pair, at first mistrustful of each other, become good friends. Their camaraderie is greatly aided while they hold Frank Grogan (Peter Caffrey) as a hostage. Frank tries to talk his way out of his restrained position and almost succeeds in convincing his captors that he is being held for a strictly personal reason, that of having the affair with the gang boss. "Did you ever make love to a gangster's wife?" he moans. "It's like making love with the angel of death looking over your shoulder..You can't enjoy yourself."
This observation is the wittiest in the film, which wouldn't be so bad if writer-director Breathnach could have sustained the merriment. Breathnath portrays Git's appeal in zeroing in on a one-night stand he enjoys with a local girl in a bar, but despite the decent acting of the ensemble, "I Went Down" is an indie that's just too unreachable.
Rated R. Running time: 107 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews