Punch drunk and ungloved, CALM WITH HORSES marks the feature directorial debut of Nick Rowland.
In dark rural Ireland, ex-boxer Arm has become the feared enforcer for the drug-dealing Devers family, whilst also trying to be a good father to his autistic five-year-old son Jack.
His attempt at parenthood is somewhere between appalling and adequate, and illustrates his partnership failure with Jack’s mother, Ursula.
Torn between these two families and tortured by his inability at maintaining romantic and domestic relationships, Arm’s loyalties are truly tested when he is asked to kill for the first time.
Opening with bruised knuckles, CALM WITH HORSES continues to knuckle dust its audience with brutal bashings, vile invective and muddle headed morality.
Trying to assure Ursula about Jack’s autism, Arm claims that he’s a “Late developer like me.”, Ursula’s poignant, pungent reply, “that’s encouraging” stings like a bee.
Ursula is also acerbically astute with her rebuttal of Arm’s reasoning for his loyalty to the Devers. “That’s not loyalty. That’s servitude.” she spits.
Cosmo Jarvis is scary as Arm, a knuckleman Neanderthal, once a county representative in the ring, he killed an opponent during a bout. When he calls himself retired, it sounds as if he’s saying retarded, and maybe his pugilism has numbed his skull. He’s a thick thug but he does have a conscience and while happy to thrash the tripe out of someone, he draws the line at assassination.
Niamh Algar as Ursula is the real revelation in CALM WITH HORSES, a beautifully rendered, no heroics please performance, a stable characterisation of a woman baring up to past life choices and daring to dream of a better life to come.
All the best scenes in CALM WITH HORSES have her in them, perhaps save Arm’s encounter with a widow woman who is being fleeced by the devious Devers.
Filmed in Galway and Clare, CALM WITH HORSES boasts shots and scenes of contrasting beauty and brutality, with rugged coastlines and countrysides abutted with industrial estates and rusting rustic sheds.
The sordid, squalid actions of swaggering psychopaths without the black humour that makes the writing of Martin McDonagh somehow palatable make for some restless viewing, but CALM WITH HORSES is not without merit.
