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Posts Tagged ‘Barry Keoghan’

SHORT TAKES: “Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man,” “Sisu: Road to Revenge,” “Nuremberg”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 24, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Cillian Murphy, Barry Keoghan

“Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man” My rating: B- (Netflix)

112 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The new stand-alone final episode of “Peaky Blinders” isn’t bad — just unnecessary.

The Brit series, which ran on Netflix from 2013 to 2022, was exemplary television, a crime drama and family saga that occasionally reached Shakespearean heights.  Kind of an episodic “Godfather” with a Birmingham accent.

One wonders if creator Steven Knight’s decision to add a final filmic coda to the story of the outlaw Shelby clan was prompted by the Oscar win (for “Oppenheimer”) by Cillian Murphy, whose brooding presence as the ruthless and tormented Thomas Shelby  was the show’s driving force.

Certainly it wasn’t because Knight had some sort of important story to tell. “Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man” feels like it was thrown together, a movie in search of a reason for being. 

Oh, the atmosphere is as brooding as ever, and Murphy is always watchable. But the whole production seems to have been glued together from a bunch of pieces Knight had lying about.

It’s World War II and the British fascist Beckett (Tim Roth at his most reprehensible) is charged with smuggling into England several million dollars in fake pound notes counterfeited by the Nazis.  The idea is to crash the economy  and bring the German conquest of Britain to a swift conclusion.

To facilitate this scheme Beckett needs the assistance of the Peaky Blinders, the crime syndicate created by Tommy Shelby but now run by his estranged son Duke (Barry Keoghan). 

Duke apparently has no patriotic sensibilities.  But his father Tommy, long retired on his country estate and haunted by the memories of the loved ones he has lost, gets wind of the plot and comes out of retirement to foil it.

That’s all you need to know.  There are several solid action sequences and the production values are top notch, but something feels off.

Mostly it’s the feeling that Tommy’s newfound love of country has been manufactured out of whole cloth.  It’s a convenient but squishy plot device.

Moreover, Knight’s screenplay (the director is Tom Harper) has Tommy doing some pretty reprehensible things.  Like murdering a British soldier on leave because he and his pals are making too much noise in Tommy’s favorite pub. Not exactly the way to prove your nationalistic bona fides.

Along the way we get some wacko diversions, like Rebecca Ferguson as the twin of Tommy’s long-dead gypsy wife.  She periodically goes into trance in which her body is inhabited by the spirit of her dead sister.  No, really.

Jorma Tommila

“SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE” My rating: C+ (Netflix)

89 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Sisu” was one of 2022’s guilty pleasures.

Alas, the new followup, “Sisu: Road to Revenge” mostly left me feeling guilty.

The original film was a combination of “Saving Private Ryan” and a Road Runner cartoon, with a silent Finnish commando taking out a platoon of goonish Germans in one spectacular action sequence after another.

This sequel once again features Jorma Tommila as Astami, the bearded loner whose survival skills are legendary.  The war is over and Astami (accompanied by his fluffy pooch) squares off against the Soviets who now occupy his old stomping grounds in eastern Finland.

It’s a road movie. Our hero has returned to dismantle the home he once shared with his now-deceased family so that he can rebuild on free Finnish soil.  The action takes place as he drives a flatbed truck loaded with lumber, pursued by same Russian war criminal  (Steven Lang) who murdered his family.

There are some spectacular (and, frankly, ridiculous) stunts with tanks, motorcycles and fighter planes, and a long sequence taking place on a train suggests that writer/director Jamari Hollander is well acquainted with Buster Keaton’s silent classic “The General.” 

Lang’s bad guy oozes menace.  Astami once again endures punishments that approach “Passion of the Christ” levels of torture porn.

But this time around it feels forced and phony — not that the original was realistic, but it at least radiated originality.  “Sisu: Road to Revenge” feels too calculated, too by-the-numbers.

Rami Malick, Russell Crowe

“NUREMBERG” My rating: B (Netflix)

148 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

James Vanderbilt’s “Nuremberg” starts off feeling like a made-for-TV movie with an A-list cast.

But stick with it and you’ll find a historical drama that resonates with uncomfortable lessons still relevant today.

The screenplay by Vanderbilt and Jack El-Hai focuses on the war crime trials that unfolded in Nuremberg, Germany, at the end of the World War II. 

The main focus is on Herman Göring (Russell Crowe), Hitler’s second in command, and an American military psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), assigned to befriend and evaluate the unrepentant Nazi before his trial can proceed.

So what we’ve got here are two Oscar winners in a duel of words and ideas.  Göring is pompous, arrogant and defiant, yet still capable of charm.  Kelley finds himself fascinated by his prisoner/patient…so much so that he develops an unhealthy interest in Goring’s wife and daughter.

There’s plenty of star power orbiting around these two.  Michael Shannon plays Robert Jackson, an American jurist prosecuting the case; Richard E. Grant is his British counterpart. John Slattery is the hard-ass officer in charge of the prisoners.  Leo Woodall is the German-speaking interpreter who must assist Göring while not revealing that most members of his Jewish family died in the Holocaust.

“Nuremberg” is most effective in hammering home the idea that the rise of Naziism was not some aberration but rather a sly exploitation of the fears, foible and prejudices that still afflict the human race.

It could happen all over again.  Hell, perhaps it already has.

| Robert W. Butler

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“SALTBURN”: Cuckoo’s nest

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 30, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Jacob Elordi, Barry Keoghan

“SALTBURN” My rating: B-(In theaters)

131 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Good-looking but off-putting, Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn” is yet another examination of British class warfare.

Fennell, who made a remarkable directing debut a couple of years back with the female revenge dramedy  “Promising Young Woman,” here mines a favorite plot of English iconoclasts, that of a lowly commoner “adopted” by his societal betters.

Our protagonist is the delightfully named Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), whose freshman year at Oxford is highlighted by a growing friendship with the beautiful, charming, rich-as-hell Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi).  

It’s an odd pairing.  Oliver, while a good student, is something of a blank-faced emotional drone, definitely not one of the handsomely entitled sort Felix usually runs with.  

They meet when Oliver does an unexpectedly generous and apparently selfless favor for Felix, and the latter decides that maybe this working-class  kid provides just the sort of down-to-earth genuineness lacking in his posh life.

Upon learning that Oliver’s father has died of a drug overdose, Felix suggests Oliver spend the summer with him at his palatial family estate, Saltburn. Good times.

“Saltburn” touches on most of the plot points and characters common to this sort of enterprise.

There’s a cousin (Archie Madekwe) who hates the low-born OIiver from the get-go; a sad, substance-abusing sister (Sadie Soverall) who offers sexual promise; the mother  (Rosamund Pike), eager to prove her open mindedness (“I was a lesbian for a while…too wet for me”) by doting on the lower-class visitor; the father (Richard E. Grant) so rich he can spend his days on his collecting obsessions.

There’s also another visitor, the freeloading Pamela (Carey Mulligan), one of Mother’s friends but now wearing out her welcome. Upon learning she has died a member of the household observes: “She’d do anything for attention.”

Mining some of the same psychological landscape as “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” Fennell’s film slowly reveals that the harmlessly bland Oliver is in fact a sort of emotional vampire (in one shocking scene he appears to be feasting on menstrual blood). In fact, he’s the human version of the cuckoo, a bird that takes over other birds’ nests, destroying their eggs and substituting one of its own.

Rosamund Pike

The results are unashamedly misanthropic. “Saltburn” satirizes the ruling class, but its avenging angel proletarian “hero” is no better than his titled targets.

Given the contempt and cynicism on display, the film is watchable enough; it certainly doesn’t hurt that most of the roles have been taken by beautiful people.

Not that Barry Keoghan is beautiful, exactly.  In the right light his potato face exudes a sort of brute animal cunning;  at other times he can seem almost handsome. It’s the perfect chameleonic approach to a shifty character like Oliver.

And the film ends with a sequence so perfect — a naked Oliver dancing rapturously through the halls of Saltburn — that I’m almost willing to blow off my reservations. A strong finish is always a good thing.

| Robert W. Butler

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“THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN”: Quaint despair

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 28, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Brendan Gleeson, Colin Farrell

“THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN” My rating: B (In theaters)

109 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Audiences are going to love Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin”  — right up to the point where they start to hate it.

McDonagh is not the sort of filmmaker to chuck his audience under the chin and send us off with a pat on the head.  His protagonists  (like those played by Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”) are often brittle/bitter or comically hateful, and he relishes nudging us in one direction only to see us ricochet off unforeseen developments.

The impeccably-acted “Banshees…” pushes that alienation to its utmost.

The film starts out feeling almost like a sequel to John Ford’s “The Quiet Man.”  This is a 1920s Ireland of horse-drawn carts and thatched roofs, a scape of land and sea so beautifully captured in Ben Davis’ cinematography as to exude postcard perfection.

There’s a plethora of Irish “types”: the chatty pub keeper, the omen-spouting old lady who looks like Death in “The Seventh Seal,” the small-town copper who sheathes his brutality in brisk protocol, the village idiot.

For its first hour or so, “Banshees…” plays like a melancholy comedy, a sort of Gaelic Chekhov punctuated by hilarious exchanges (not that the participants think of themselves as hilarious…that’s for the us to pick up).

And then after that alluring beginning the film becomes incrementally more dark and alarming until it finds itself in tragic mode.

Padraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson) are Mutt-and-Jeff best buds.  Technically they’re  farmers, but they don’t spend a lot of time working.  Most afternoons they can be found downing pints in the local pub.

Padraic — a childlike fellow followed everywhere by his miniature donkey — is mildly alarmed when one day Colm refuses to answer his door.  He’s in there, all right, smoking a cig in front of the fire. But he’s refusing to acknowledge his best friend.

Colm is immune to Padraic’s` increasingly desperate attempts to re-establish their normal routine.  Finally Colm reveals that he’s been depressed for ages, and fears that his attachment to Padraic is preventing him from achieving his life’s work — to write a tune for his fiddle that will outlive him.

It’s not that he hates Padraic…it’s just that the guy is insufferably dull, and that dullness is infectious.

A key to McDonagh’s screenplay is the way it contrasts the beauty of Inisherin Island against the smothering repetition of its social life. 

It’s not just Colm who’s going stir crazy here.  Padraic’s spinster sister  Siobhan (Kerry Condon) — also his cook and housekeeper — perplexes her proudly anti-intellectual neighbors with a passion for (gasp!) reading and dreams of moving to the mainland.

Never mind that the sounds of Ireland’s “troubles” — explosions and gunshots — are often can be heard from across the water.  Even civil war is better than wasting away in Inisherin.

And then there’s Dominic (Barry Keoghan), the oft-abused son of the local cop and regarded by most folks as an “idjit.” Well, Domiic certainly lacks even the most basic social skills; he might even be on the spectrum. But he’s far from stupid.  Listen to his vocabulary…he may just be the brightest bulb in this pack.


Kerry Condon

Despite the entreaties of his fellow islanders and the local priest to return to the status quo (the film contains possibly the funniest confessional scene in movies), Colm only digs in his heels. In fact, he threatens to cut off one of his fingers for every time Padraic approaches him.

Before it’s all over Padraic will come to dread the thud of severed digits being hurled at his door.

Yeah, dark.

It’s at this point that “The Banshees of Inisherin” (that’s also the title of the fiddle tune Colm is writing) dives so far into the black that a good chunk of the audience will be left stewing in puzzlement (if not outright disgust).

Clearly McDonogh’s sentiments align with Colm’s, whose farmhouse — packed with folk art objects —suggests a sensitive spirit trapped in a world of soul-killing banality that no amount of pretty scenery can relieve.

Farrell’s Paderaic, on the other hand, is an adolescent in a man’s body, friendly and open but apparently incapable of self-reflection. And like a child, he can take only so much hurt and rejection before lashing out,

“Banshees…” is ultimately a scathing takedown of the cliched quaintness of traditional Irish life, where creativity is smothered and self-mutilation becomes a substitute for  professional mental health care.

The big question is how many viewers will be able/willing to ride its glum message to the end.

| Robert W. Butler

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“AMERICAN ANIMALS”: Amateur hour

Posted in Art house fare, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 21, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Barry Keoghan, Evan Peters

“AMERICAN ANIMALS” My rating: C+ 

116 minutes | MPAA rating: R

In “American Animals” four college-age doofuses  rob a university library of a priceless copy of Audubon’s massive Birds of America.

Based on real events, the film is as much about these losers’ deluded dreams as it is about the planning and execution of the heist.

Writer/director Bart Layton attempts to add perspective to this shambling crime story by alternating between fictional recreations of the robbery and interviews with the actual participants. Now in their mid-30s, these men sometimes contradict one another…when that happens Layton will often replay a scene “Rashomon”-style, now altered to reflect a different individual’s memories (or inventions).

Spencer (Barry Keoghan) and Warren (Evan Peters) are childhood friends attending different colleges in Lexington, KY.  They are bored, unfulfilled children of Middle America, and when they learn that the Transylvania University library has a locked-down room displaying  the Audubon book and other treasures (like a first edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species) they begin to consider if they could rob the place. (more…)

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