Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Eoin Macken
Starring: Dean Charles Chapman, Finn Cole, Anya Taylor-Joy, Emmett J Scanlan,
Travis Fimmel, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Conleth Hill
Set in 2003 Dublin but very much a throwback to British youth movies of
the '90s, writer/director Eoin Macken's adaptation of
Rob Doyle's novel Here Are the Young Men plays out
over that most uncertain time in a young person's life – the summer
immediately following graduation from school, when childhood must be left
behind but adulthood seems something you're ill-prepared to face.
The two young men at the centre of Macken's film certainly aren't ready
for adulthood. Kearney (Finn Cole) is a sociopath already kicked
out of school for vandalism, while his best friend Matthew (Dean-Charles Chapman) is a sensitive soul, though easily lead astray by Kearney.
Released from school and fuelled by drugs supplied by their philosophising
friend Rez (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), the boys break into their school
and trash a classroom before destroying the car belonging to their
principal (Ralph Ineson). Bizarrely, they face no consequences for
such actions, despite being caught red-handed. Are we supposed to believe
the principal simply shrugged them off with a "boys will be boys" tut tut?
If so, it's the first of several tests of our ability to suspend
disbelief.
On the way home from their vandalism the three boys witness a young girl
killed when she runs into the path of an oncoming car. While Matthew and
Rez are shaken up, Kearney experiences elation. He claims he's never felt
more alive, and speaks in ambiguous terms about recreating the rush before
leaving for America to hook up with his brother.
Whether Kearney actually departs for America is somewhat confusing. He
reappears soon after, though the movie never really communicates how much
time is passing until late on when someone declares it's the last day of
the summer. Maybe Kearney simply pretended to leave the country, though
even back in 2003 mobile phones were so prevalent that it would have been
hard to pull off such a ruse (I can't figure out why the movie isn't set
in the late '90s when technology wasn't such a troublesome issue for
storytellers). Anyway, among his boasts of banging American girls he
claims to have killed a homeless man, a story he quickly retracts upon
seeing Matthew's horrified reaction. But Kearney is determined to involve
Matthew in his evil plans, targeting both a local homeless man and
Matthew's girlfriend Jen (Anya Taylor-Joy), who is out of his
league by every metric.
Macken's filmmaking is restless, and his movie struts like a teenage boy
who just popped his cherry. At times it's as over-bearing and obnoxious as
its characters, especially in the bizarre fantasy sequences in which our young
protagonists imagine themselves guests on an American talk show hosted by
Travis Fimmel and featuring a cameo by Noomi Rapace. These
sequences are employed as a cheap way for the film's characters to
verbalise their feelings. In recent years, a new generation of Irish
filmmakers have finally figured out the art of visual storytelling
(Ireland might be a Catholic nation but it's long been decidedly
Protestant in its reverence for words over images), but
Here Are the Young Men feels like an unwelcome return to the
bad old days of overly verbose Irish films that told rather than showed.
Fittingly, it resembles exactly the sort of movies that were coming out of
Ireland at the turn of the century. Buried in the exposition are a few
insightful lines, such as when Kearney punches his father (Conleth Hill) and remarks how soft his face felt, a chillingly cold line that greatly
exemplifies Kearney's Darwinian philosophy.
While the young British actors are all excellent, they do struggle with
inconsistent Dublin accents. Matthew and Kearney are portrayed as coming
from working class homes yet they speak in distinctively middle class
Dublin brogues. This adds extra confusion to an already disconcerting
narrative. Had their home lives matched their well-to-do accents it might
make sense for them to get away with trashing their school and their
principal's car, and Matthew and Kearney might have been portrayed as
Leopold and Loeb figures, young men who feel invincible due to their
societal privilege. With the posh Jen being the only sensible and likeable
figure in the movie, it does feel like the film is punching down when she
delivers lectures to the working class Matthew.
There's an interesting movie somewhere in
Here Are the Young Men, or maybe a better adaptation of Doyle's book. Ironically, it suffers
from a filmmaker who seems intent on following the example of others
rather than forging his own creative path. Just as Matthew is sucked in by
the dangerous charisma of Kearney, Macken seems similarly enamoured by
Danny Boyle. Even Boyle grew out of his yoof phase, and there's enough
here to suggest that Macken might deliver more mature films now that he's
gotten this out of his system.
Here Are the Young Men is on Netflix UK/ROI now.
