"Intermission," a story about the inter-related lives of a group of Dublin men and women, mostly either working- or criminal class, has its moments but overall it's a disappointment. The story is weak. Episodes of marital infidelity, searching for love, random child-engineered mayhem, a stupid detective in search of boob tube fame and a very conventional crime caper don't really come together. Caricatures rather than characters dominate the movie.
Colin Farrell pulls off his role as a thug with no personal attributes- it's impossible to care about him or even ponder his brutal and dumb acts. Shirley Henderson as a lonely young woman is the best actor in "Intermission." A Scot in the current "Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself," she's convincing here as an Irish lass going on age from thirty to spinsterhood (a word still in vogue in Eire). Kelly MacDonald, an up and coming actress with real ability, is largely wasted as a gal who abandons her boyfriend for a colorless bank manager who leaves his anguished wife for sweeter bedsheets. She's beautiful but transparently vacuous.
Perhaps this film resonates with Irish, and even U.K., audiences but I found it disappointing. The theater's excellent sound system merely amplified the incomprehensibility and audibility of much speech. It's one thing not to understand the argot of today's urban Irish working class. It's something else to be trying to figure out what you're hearing during much of a movie.
4/10.
Colin Farrell pulls off his role as a thug with no personal attributes- it's impossible to care about him or even ponder his brutal and dumb acts. Shirley Henderson as a lonely young woman is the best actor in "Intermission." A Scot in the current "Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself," she's convincing here as an Irish lass going on age from thirty to spinsterhood (a word still in vogue in Eire). Kelly MacDonald, an up and coming actress with real ability, is largely wasted as a gal who abandons her boyfriend for a colorless bank manager who leaves his anguished wife for sweeter bedsheets. She's beautiful but transparently vacuous.
Perhaps this film resonates with Irish, and even U.K., audiences but I found it disappointing. The theater's excellent sound system merely amplified the incomprehensibility and audibility of much speech. It's one thing not to understand the argot of today's urban Irish working class. It's something else to be trying to figure out what you're hearing during much of a movie.
4/10.