Crush Proof

Just out of the Dublin slammer, Neal (Healy) has reincarceration snapping at his heels, no matter where he bolts. His ex-girl calls the cops when he tries to break down her door for a first sight of his son; a righteous copper harasses him over the mobile phone Neal then steals from a passer-by; and by nightfall he's at the centre of a manhunt after a punishment mock hanging of the boy who betrayed him goes wrong. At least his gang, pony kids living around a sink estate on the city's fringes, rally round as he contemplates quitting his hometown - though his best friend Liam (O'Toole) choosing this moment to take up with sassy stable lass Nuala (Verveen), Neal's deeply estranged half-sister and ex-lover, certainly complicates matters. Despite the in-your-face semi-vérité style, with an epileptic selection of urgently modern audio pyrotechnics obtruding from the soundtrack, the working class Irish setting is used merely as picturesque milieu. The myriad relationships often seem impenetrably inbred, actions range from implausible to inexplicable, and the plot is fraught with undirected bombast and melodramatic contrivance.