Not even John B. Keane could come up with a rural Irish tragedy as bleak as the one director Chris Andrews and his co-writer Jonathan Hourigan give us in "Bring Them Down". The drama here is very simple. Two neighboring sheep farmers, one now married to the former girlfriend of the other, suddenly after twenty years find themselves at war with each other over the disappearance of two rams. Following on from a crime seemingly committed without real malice there's no road for these men to go other down into some kind of pit where death appears to be the only way out and forgiveness doesn't appear to be an option.
"Bring Them Down" is a grim movie but there is certainly an uncommon brilliance to it. Andrews handles the film's bleak scenario beautifully showing us the same events through two sets of eyes and it's very well acted by Christopher Abbot and Paul Ready as the two opposing farmers and by Colm Meaney as the ailing father of one of them and best of all by the brilliant Barry Keoghan as the son of the other.
As I've said before Keoghan may be most versatile actor of his generation with all the charisma of a young Brando and here he must restrain his natural tendency to break out and giving a fully rounded portrayal of someone not quite sure of his own actions. This may be a dark and unrelenting movie yet it grips like a vice.
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