Intermission Movie Review:

It's surprising what can happen to just a few people in Dublin. John (Murphy) hates his job and has stupidly lost the love of his life. Deirdre (Macdonald) thinks she has found happiness with an older man. Sally (Henderson) is cultivating a moustache and hates men. Det. Jerry Lynch (Meaney) wants to be a Reality TV star. Oscar (Wilmot) is having real problems with his self-esteem and Lehiff (Farrell) is hoping to move up in the crime world.

Spending some time in the lives of downtrodden working class might sound slightly depressing but add a sprig of Irish charm and humour and you have a character drama that is funny as well as emotional.

Movies like this with an interweaving story rely on an ensemble cast and Intermission is no exception. Debut making Director John Crowley has assembled some of Ireland's and Britain's finest to fill this motley crew. Colin Farrell proves again that he is not just a pretty face and starts to live up to that next big thing motif he has been labelled with. His portrayal of petty thug Lehiff is superb, showing his range as an actor. He is equally at ease playing the bad or the good guy and isn't afraid to diversify in his career, which is quite refreshing for a top-draw leading man.

The very underrated Colm Meaney reminds us that there is more to him than a Star Trek uniform with another attention grabbing performance. His Detective Lynch is everything that is both good and bad about the modern law enforcer, filled with passion for the law but uses excessive measures to enforce it. Shirley Henderson is as watchable as ever. Her character might be the brunt of quite a few jokes but the strength of the actress comes through when you discover why she is like she is. David Wilmot also puts in a noticeable performance as the downtrodden Oscar.
Cillian Murphy and Kelly Macdonald are also good but their characters don't really have the screen presence of the rest of the ensemble to make them standout. This is mainly due to the writing as their story isn't the most interesting of the interweaving tales.

As character driven dramas go, Intermission is a good example of the genre. You are interested in the characters and care about the outcome of their situation. With a little more work on some of the plotlines, especially John and Deirdre's, this could have been a lot better but as it is you feel that, while interesting, you don't have enough of your emotions invested in the characters to keep your attention 100% on every story.

Star Rating = * * *

Jamie Kelwick

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There are about 10 main characters in this thoroughly engaging multi-strand ensemble comedy that looks at the resilience required to get through everyday life. John (Murphy) has a dead-end job in a superstore and is desperately missing his girlfriend Deirdre (Macdonald), who has run off with a married bank manager (McElhatton), whose shattered wife (O'Kane) expresses her anger in a rather unusual way. Meanwhile, Deirdre's sister (Henderson) is still struggling to overcome a particularly bad relationship, while the local lowlife thug (Farrell) squares off against a corrupt cop (Meaney) to rule the streets. All of these characters, and several others, come together in a complex--and comic--web of sex, love and violence that we know is not heading where anyone thinks it will.

O'Rowe's script is a clever cross-section of Irish society--the characters are sharply defined, and they all have distinct levels of desperation as they try to pick their way through the minefield of modern society. The title refers to the fact that every character seems stalled in life, as if they're waiting for the next act to begin, whatever it might be. This is a brilliant idea, and it's well-explored on several levels by the cast as well as the writer and director. Murphy delivers on the promise of 28 Days Later with a winning central performance here; he's the emotional lynchpin that holds the story strands together. Macdonald and Henderson are very funny as young women who have important, life-altering decisions to make. Meaney does his Irish-thug routine perfectly. And Farrell is wonderfully jumpy, charming and mad as a hatter (basically he's expanding on his Veronica Guerin cameo); his opening scene is like a punch in the face! The film is most successful when it focuses on the romantic plotlines, and less so when the crime caper takes over at the end. The singles dance sequence is both hysterical and telling; the face-off between Meaney and Farrell is at least unpredictable, and handled with a teasing cinematic wit. This is an extremely promising film debut from theatre director Crowley, and one of the most assured Irish films in memory.

Rich Cline

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