Calm with Horses

Douglas is a former boxer now working for a criminal family in rural Ireland as the man they send to hurt people. He is also trying to care for his autistic son. What the film asks is how long he can hold those two lives against each other. Nick Rowland's first feature refuses to make the violence look good. Douglas is not a man who fights well, he is a man told to fight, and there is a flinch in his body after every blow. Cosmo Jarvis plays it almost entirely without speech, while Barry Keoghan, as the young man using him, carries the most dangerous energy in the picture. The source is the title story in Colin Barrett's collection Young Skins. It premiered at Toronto in 2019 and opened in Ireland on 13 March 2020. The difficulty is that it is dark, hopeless and offers its characters no way out. There is little violence, but it arrives without warning. Who it is for: admirers of Irish crime drama and hard character work. Who it is not for: anyone who needs a comforting close.