Given Ireland’s economic meltdown, it’s hardly surprising its middle classes are angry, so there’s a bitter truth in writer-director Terry McMahon’s microbudget portrait of a middle-management sociopath – but it’s pretty much the film’s sole redeeming feature. In the course of a weekend conference attended by colleagues and partners, our protagonist, Charlie (Emmett Scanlan), begins to ignore the moral stop-signs impinging on his liberty and encourages the others to follow his example of using playing cards to choose his moments of transgression – with marital mayhem, betrayal and worse the results. A zesty conceit, perhaps, yet don’t the cards unhelpfully absolve our Charlie of responsibility?
The movie ploughs on regardless, however, and the abrasively one-note characterisation soon causes us to buy out of any potential empathy with this grandstanding, pompous nogoodnik. McMahon’s aiming for the portentous bile of Neil LaBute or David Mamet, but his dialogue isn’t anywhere near that level, his story has scant dramatic crunch and his over-reaching leaves effortful leading man Scanlan dreadfully exposed. Lots of attitude, little accomplishment.