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Memorable, crazy movie

Fresh and Exciting

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Perrier's Bounty tries hard to be as pithy and wittily profound as In Bruges, but doesn't quite manage the task. To be fair, Bruges is a masterpiece and a Goliath of a script to aspire too, but this one has its own brand of scrappy crime fun, full of enough beans to keep the viewer jumping for its slight running time. Few films can boast narration provided by the Grim Reaper, and fewer still can say that said Reaper is voiced by Gabriel Byrne. But indeed, Byrne beckons us into this violent fable with his patented tone, both baleful and quaint. The fable in question concerns Michael McCrea (Cillian Murphy) an irresponsible young Irish lad who is seriously bereft of both luck and common sense. He lives in a small town in northern Ireland and owes a hefty loan to local crime lord Darren Perrier (Brendan Gleeson). Because of how tiny the town is, it's pretty easy for Perrier's goons to find and engage him in a road runner goose chase all about the area, forcing him to scoop up his on and off girlfriend (Jodie Whittaker), and head for the hills. He's also joined by his uber eccentric father (Jim Broadbent) who believes that the Grim Reaper has visited him at night and given him the alarming prognosis that he will die the next time he falls asleep. Broadbent is a solid gold asset to any film he's in, and practically spews perfectly timed comic banter non stop. Michael thinks he has a way out of trouble with local petty thief The Mutt (Liam Cunningham, aka Ser Davos Seaworth, also a comedic treasure here), which turns out to be another notch in the belt of bad judgment. Meanwhile, Perrier's crew reels after one of their slain thugs (at Michael's hand) turns out to have been involved in a love affair with another, who now has the wrath of vengeance in his eyes. There's a scene where Gleeson comforts the bereaved hoodlum and seems deeply wounded at the couple's reluctance to tell him of their love. Gleeson assures them he has no issue with homosexuality and wishes they would have shared with him. In the context of hardened criminals out for blood, this kind of exchange is priceless and brings rigid archetypes right down to earth, for maximum hilarity and well earned pathos. The film meanders a bit, but never out ran my attention span, following through with it's story in ways both welcomingly bloody and predictably quirky. It doesn't add up to anything life altering when all is said and done, but damn if the things which are said and are done along the way aren't just pure genre entertainment, inducing chuckles, thrills and nostalgia for other films withing the niche. In the troupe of writers who look up to Guy Ritchie, Quentin Tarantino and Martin McDonough, this scribe is on to something. Keep an eye out for Lord Varys, Roose Bolton and a young Domhall Gleeson too.

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.

I thought it was an outstanding little film; not a loose end left, lots of karma. The acting was unbelievably good, with Jim Broadbent, Cillian Murphy, Jodie Whitaker and Brendan Gleeson, joined by a throng of wonderful cutthroats, henchmen and great dog trainers. I cannot fathom why people wouldn't like the movie, its very intriguing use of language and its well drawn characters. The voice over by the Reaper was also well done, and had a highly literary feel.It had enough texture to give a feel for the impoverished underlife of Dubliners.

An aptly-described "urban western" that fans Crank and Lock Stock should not miss. In addition to fully working as a perilous crime thriller, the film's script is filled with comedy, and the performances bring that out incredibly well. The magnetic Cillian Murphy is a quick hook into the world of the film, but Jim Broadbent is the story's heart, and the eccentric but completely relatable character he paints is a treat to watch. Brendan Gleeson as the titular Perrier is, of course, great. In short, the film is prime entertainment, whose believable setting acts as a portal into something very unique. Definitely recommended.