Belly Of The Whale

A well known face is on his back bleeding and moaning. He's being dragged through a room by a man in a cape and a Mexican wrestling mask. The darkness of the building is pierced by the lights of the poker machines surrounding them. Roars and shouts fill the air. Scottish accents, Ulster accents and Tipperary accents mix to form a big stew. Chaos. How did it all come to this?

Moody (Lewis McDougall) has returned home. The 15 year old boy with a troubled past has come back to town to reopen his fathers business and everyone is looking at him sideways, thinking of an incident they only half know. Ronald (Pat Shortt) is in town too. Stung by a silly deal that took his last euro and laughed at by a potential business partner he's not a happy man. Gits (Michael Smiley) is a business man and wannabe politician with a shady past who's in trouble with a couple of scumbags intent on blackmailing him. The paths of all three collide and well......

This was an odd film. It's strange to walk out of a cinema screen not quite sure who it was about or where (supposedly Donegal and I only know that after a bit of research) and when it was set. The story is quite straight forward and the plot is easy to follow but it's irritating lack of detail turns it into a shallow watch full of characters you don't really care about. It's tendency to wallow in misery is offputting too. Pat Shortt plays Ronald and this makes his 2007 film Garage look like a riotous slapstick comedy in comparison. Life is throwing everything at Moody and Ronald and they just seem content to take it. Until they won't anymore and decide to change things up. It's here the film begins to both loosen up, a few laughs are thrown around (mostly courtesy of Shortt's clothing and mode of transport) and then the film heads off in a direction that feels both unexpected and jarring. I mean, no one ever expects a film set in a quiet Ulster seaside town to have a scene featured a neck being punctured by a flying projectile. So there's that.

Any film featuring Pat Shortt and Michael Smiley should be onto a winner. Both are superb actors and here imbue their characters with a sense of tragedy, one being tragic and decent and the other being tragic and scummy. Unfortunately both performances are far better than the film around then. A lot happens in a short running time but it just feels like a whole pile of nothing and when it finishes you'll be left sitting there in the dark saying to yourself  "seriously?" These low key dramas full of quirkiness are something Irish cinema has been doing brilliantly for ages now but not this time. There's no hook here, nothing to hang on to, nothing to aim for. 

You get the sense there was a longer film here once. Plot lines peter out without finishing and other characters just vanish. It feels shoddy. Modern films have a tendency to be overstuffed and too long but when they are pared right down to the bone it can be equally annoying too. It's a pity. With more substance there could have been something here. I hate being down on Irish films, but here it's deserved.