‘Bring Them Down’ Review: Christopher Abbott & Barry Keoghan Power Irish Sheep-Farming Thriller [TIFF]

Chris Andrews’ “Bring Them Down” would’ve been a Western 50 years ago, but today, it has been fashioned into a rural Irish thriller. A sheep-farming dispute between two families suddenly escalates into a blood feud. But the characters are too flat to really care about their fate. Were it not for the presence of Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan, they wouldn’t be particularly watchable, except in an anthropological sense. With nothing to really hold on to, the audience must depend upon the story to string them along, which moves ahead in a disjointed, peculiar manner. Any larger significance or purpose remains elusive.

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“Bring Them Down” starts mundanely enough – two sheep are stolen from father and son Ray and Michael (Colm Meaney and Christopher Abbott) by neighboring father and son Gary and Jack (Paul Ready and Barry Keoghan). Both are established farming families in the village where they live. Confrontations and threats transpire over the next few days as Michael asks for the sheep back, and Gary and Jack refuse. Even as the conflict is heating up, one night, Michael finds most of his flock slaughtered – with the carcasses strewn across a grassland, their hind legs cut off. He is the victim of sheep-rustling or cattle-raiding, a real-life issue in the UK and Ireland where gangs covertly attack flocks owned by farmers, cut off their legs, and sell them illegally on the Black market for a high dollar value. Michael must now avenge the loss of his flock, too.

For the first half of the film, Abbott is front and center, and Keoghan appears as a fringe character, so much so that you wonder why a name actor such as him would take on such a small supporting part. Keoghan had, in fact, signed on to “Bring Them Down” before he received the Academy Award nomination for “The Banshees of Inisherin” and the pop culture success of his leading role in “Saltburn.” Even so, the second half of the film alleviates some of the questions as at its midpoint, “Bring Them Down” doubles back three days and starts all over again and narrates the same events from the perspective of Keoghan’s character, allowing him to carry half the film.

However, something bizarre about the character dynamics makes you wonder if “Bring Them Down” is completely miscast—at least from an age perspective. Abbott is 38, and Keoghan is 31—both are contemporaries and part of the new breed of emerging Hollywood stars. Yet, in this film, they are cast to be a generation apart. Abbot’s Michael was actually the ex-boyfriend of Jack’s mother. Jack is also said to be “becoming a man” during the course of the film—that and his demeanor indicates he’s meant to be a teenager, and yet it is hard to buy Keoghan as that, not least due to his muscular physique very much that of a man a decade older. Tom Burke, 43, and Paul Mescal, 28, were initially cast in Abbot’s and Keoghan’s roles. Burke certainly would’ve been more age-appropriate, though Abbot is supremely charismatic and a tremendous performer. 

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Compounding the confusion is the casting of Michael’s ex and Jack’s mother, Caroline. “Bring Them Down” actually begins with a prologue set many years earlier, where a teenage Michael purposefully kills his mother and injures his then-girlfriend Caroline (Grace Daly) in a car crash. The prologue is filmed so Michael never appears on-screen, perhaps to avoid casting an actor other than Abbot as a teenage Michael. However, we do see Caroline recast with Nora-Jane Noone as an adult, and the film only later makes the connection that they are the same character.

There is some good landscape photography in “Bring Then Down,” as befits a film set in the Irish countryside. A couple of well-staged “action” moments also shine. Performances are well-judged as both Abbott and Keoghan are safe hands and intuitive performers. The American Abbott deserves extra credit for nailing his Irish accent and delivering much of his dialog in Irish. Colm Meaney, as a fiery patriarch, also makes an impression.

“Bring Them Down” is Chris Andrews’ debut feature as a writer and director after working in the camera department of several productions. He has a nice feel for the story’s setting and shows some facility filming action. A tighter handle on dramatic construction and character development would enhance his feature filmmaking ventures. [C]

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