cillian murphy movie marathon - Day Four

Intermission

I went into this one expecting another accent-heavy ensemble British crime/caper movie filled with colorful if unlikely underworld types - and was surprised to find it had as much in common with Love Actually as Guy Richie. The movie was all about relationships and any crime (usually involving Colin Farrell in some way) was just a backdrop.

Ok, it wasn't exactly Love Actually, but there was a bunch of loosely connected relationship melodramas playing out. For most of the movie I thought it was characterized by a bunch of people acting selfishly, trying to find love and happiness, but only really concerned about themselves and what they want. Cillian Murphy, for example, dumping his girlfriend out of fear-of-commitment or something, the girlfriend (the one from Trainspotting) entering into a relationship of convenience with an older man, the old guy, leaving his wife for someone younger, the wife, out on the prowl and finding an assertiveness she never had before, and the friend who hooks up with the wife, lonely and a little desperate.

So by the end everything becomes a mess and then everyone pairs off again, correctly this time, and Cillian learns the value of love, the shy friend and the jilted sister find each other, and the wife gets the husband back, but now she has the power in the relationship.

So what did I think? The heavily accented Irish dialog was flying, and it was pretty good. The movie kept me entertained more then I thought it would. There was also the matter of a bus-driving friend and a crazy outside-the-lines cop and a TV journalist and a prick supermarket manager and an Irish Pub and a rock throwing brat and lots of other things going on.

I guess this 'review', if you can call it that, is more like a 4th grade book report just to keep track of the movie, just to mark it's existence in a blog entry so we can look back on it in the future and remember what we saw. I don't have much else to say and there are other movies that we need to play catch-up with. I'll see if E has anything to add.

Cillian handled his part well here, dark, bad-boy yet vulnerable, thick accent, did well in scenes with friends and in scenes with the Trainspotting girl. Glad we finally got around to seeing this one - we might have missed it but for the CM marathon.