Cosmo Jarvis is haunting as a brutal enforcer torn between his duty to a crime clan and his son in Nick Rowland’s powerful debut featureInventively adapted from a story in Colin Barrett’s Young Skins collection, this striking directorial feature debut from Nick Rowland (who was Bafta-nominated for his 2014 short Slap) is an immersive tale of tortured masculinity and divided loyalties that pulls the viewer right into the raging bull mindset of its haunted protagonist.
Set in rural Ireland, and boasting something of the “West Country western” flavour of Sam Peckinpah’s Cornish epic Straw Dogs, it’s a fable of failed fathers and false families, unflinching in its depiction of grim realities, but laced with a redemptive transcendence that reminded me of Andrew Haigh’s Lean on Pete, or Chloé Zhao’s The Rider.Cosmo Jarvis (unrecognisable from his magnetic turn in Lady Macbeth) delivers a performance
Read full article