The final film in week of romance films goes off the board. The film is about the youthful love of violence, of belonging and the need to be the top of the heap, and how a brief act that gives you what you want (the title of the film) will ripple through your life to the day you die.
The BBC has arranged for a former UVF terrorist who spent a great deal of time in jail for a killing he did in his teens to meet the younger brother of the man he shot and killed. The terrorist simply wants closure and to apologize, the brother wants revenge. What happens is the movie.
Punch in your gut film conveys the stupidity of violence and how our need to become the top man may not always be the best thing. Told both in the present beginning with everyone coming to the arranged meeting, the film also flashes back to the past where we see what lead up to the shooting that forever changed the life of both men and everyone in their lives.
The strength of this film is in its ability not to take the well worn road. Nothing happens as you expect it, for example the meeting doesn't happen as planned and what does happen says so much more about the human psyche than any sort of by the number cliche's most viewers are expecting. (I loaned this film to several people at my day job who hated it because it didn't take the expected path). The course of the film is very much like life. (The killing is based on an actual event the events now are not)
This is a unique and very real look at how we deal with the wrongs we have done and had done to ourselves. By the time the film had ended I found myself moved several times, probably more so in that the film doesn't punctuate each moment with swelling music or dramatic flourishes. This is a film where the small moments move you, something as simple as a smile makes you weepy. I recommend this film highly. Its not the best film ever made but it neatly gets its point across in such away that you are forced to reflect and perhaps change.
The BBC has arranged for a former UVF terrorist who spent a great deal of time in jail for a killing he did in his teens to meet the younger brother of the man he shot and killed. The terrorist simply wants closure and to apologize, the brother wants revenge. What happens is the movie.
Punch in your gut film conveys the stupidity of violence and how our need to become the top man may not always be the best thing. Told both in the present beginning with everyone coming to the arranged meeting, the film also flashes back to the past where we see what lead up to the shooting that forever changed the life of both men and everyone in their lives.
The strength of this film is in its ability not to take the well worn road. Nothing happens as you expect it, for example the meeting doesn't happen as planned and what does happen says so much more about the human psyche than any sort of by the number cliche's most viewers are expecting. (I loaned this film to several people at my day job who hated it because it didn't take the expected path). The course of the film is very much like life. (The killing is based on an actual event the events now are not)
This is a unique and very real look at how we deal with the wrongs we have done and had done to ourselves. By the time the film had ended I found myself moved several times, probably more so in that the film doesn't punctuate each moment with swelling music or dramatic flourishes. This is a film where the small moments move you, something as simple as a smile makes you weepy. I recommend this film highly. Its not the best film ever made but it neatly gets its point across in such away that you are forced to reflect and perhaps change.
great film though but i did find the ending underwhelming
ReplyDelete(corretion)he's actually a UVF terroist in the film, yea im from northern ireland
I'll make the correction, thanks.
ReplyDelete