I Went Down

Lovely, slow-burning shaggy-dog Irish crime movie built around the uneasy partnership of two small-time Dublin chancers. Thrown together for an errand, the lads are to retrieve a fugitive associate of the local crime boss, and return him to face the music. Git (McDonald) is the quiet type, only doing it to help get a mate out of trouble; Bunny (Gleeson) is a bruiser with ginger sideburns and rockabilly shoes, who likes to think he's on top of the situation when, patently, he isn't. Playwright Conor McPherson's mixes broad humour and dialogue (in the Roddy Doyle vein) into a neat thriller plot. He's well served by an as-yet relatively unknown cast, who never allow the skew-whiff turns of phrase to sound self-conscious, and by the director's guiding sense of equilibrium. It's all beguilingly entertaining as we move through a landscape of rural petrol stations, stand-offs on the peat bog, and deepening intrigue; deceptively rich, too, as it reflects on how its reluctant protagonists stand up to the demands of modern masculinity when they're estranged from their womenfolk, and to consider the whys and wherefores of loyalty and integrity when greed and violent persuasion have blurred the lines of moral probity.