‘Bring Them Down’ Review: A Blood-Soaked Irish Drama That Lays Low Its Feuding Characters
variety.comSiddhant Adlakha A brutally violent directorial debut, Christopher Andrews’ rural Irish drama “Bring Them Down” veers between pitch-black humor and pervading melancholy.
A tale of fathers, sons, and mutilated sheep, it toys with narrative point of view in “Rashomon”-like fashion, but keeps pressing questions of masculinity and cycles of sadness hovering just out of view.
Fittingly, like its emotionally stunted male characters, it doesn’t confront these notions head on, but lets them quietly build in the form of a simmering blood feud that feels all-encompassing in the moment, but upon taking a step back, reveals a pitiable quality.
A brief but distressing prologue — told through alternating chaos and silence — reveals a car crash. Michael (Christopher Abbott), upon finding out that his mother had planned to leave his father, sped off in a fit of uncontrollable emotion and swerved off the road.
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