Bring Them Down bites off more than it can chew
Mike Finnerty 05 Feb 2025
The Irish countryside is a vast sandbox for creatives to play in.
The works of John B Keane and Claire Keegan are a testament to this and even directors like David Lean and Ken Loach have used Irish geography to their advantage to tell their stories.
So, how does Bring Them Down differ from the formula?
It attempts to add a bit of bite to an already established setting.
Bring Them Down pits American actor Christopher Abbott and his father Colm Meaney against Barry Keoghan and his father Conor MacNeill as warring families in the Irish countryside.
On one side, Abbott and Meaney are trying to make ends meet by tending to their sheep while the Keoghan and MacNeill camp look to dig themselves out of a financial hole by any means necessary.
Bring Them Down is the debut film of writer-director Christopher Andrews and the film is a solid calling card.
At the core of the film is the push-pull dynamic of Abbott and Keoghan, one is the Id and one is the Superego.
Abbott, known for his roles in films like Poor Things and the recent Wolf Man remake, pulls off the impossible and makes the Irish accent sound convincing coming from the mouth of an American actor.
The film is set in Connemara and there is a specificity to the Irish language spoken in the film that is bound to make Galwegians homesick.
If you hadn’t told someone that Abbott is as American as apple pie in real life you would fully buy his performance as a rural Irish farmer.
In the scenes between Abbott and Meaney, playing father and son, both are wholly believable as rural Irish farmers; it’s just enough to make you forget that one of them is from Connecticut and one is from Glasnevin when they are communicating as Gaeilge.
The other side of the coin is Dublin’s own Barry Keoghan, who filmed this film right after Banshees Of Inisherin but right before he became truly huge with Saltburn.
Keoghan continues to flesh out his portfolio with another performance where he’s more than meets the eye and plays his character with a scrappy underdog quality.
If that sounds familiar, please refer to Keoghan’s IMDB page; he is running the risk of boxing himself into this character archetype.
Keoghan is very good at what he does, but with this performance coming in the wake of Bird is something of a step back; there are only so many times an actor can lay the cheeky but vulnerable young man role before it runs the risk of getting old.
In a bubble Keoghan’s performance is fine, in the wider context of his career the film is more of the same.
If you like the Barry Keoghan brand of cereal, you will find plenty to like here.
Bring Them Down ultimately boils down to an exploration of masculinity in the context of rural Ireland; the problem is, that exact topic has been done much better elsewhere.
The frustrating thing about Bring Them Down – and this was a problem with A Complete Unknown as well – is the film has stretches where it threatens to become much more than the sum of its parts but it pulls back at the last minute.
There are stretches of the film where it digs a bit deeper into the character’s backstories and the sub-text of isolation in rural Ireland is baked in; the problem is, they are half-baked.
The oven is on but the middle isn’t fully cooked.
A lot of this might simply be down to budget restraints – that would certainly explain the film ending with all the abruptness of an episode of Happy Days – but that makes the film a bit more frustrating.
We are willing to meet the film halfway – the film has the classic European cinema thing of having 10 production company logos before the film starts so it wasn’t exactly swimming in Hollywood money.
However, we’re not letting the film off the hook just yet – the film is better directed than it is written and that’s always a major problem for a film.
In fact, it’s more frustrating when a film is well-made and well-shot but is lacking in the script department.
If a student handed this film in as an English homework assignment, the teacher would say there are glimpses of potential but it needs to be fleshed out more.
The film is a little bit of Rebel Ridge here with its man on a mission in the countryside vibe, it’s a little A History Of Violence there with how it explores how men attempt to escape their past but can never fully escape it yet it never fully commits either to the lofty ideas it throws out.
Despite our criticism, Andrews is an incredibly adept director and manages to make the most of his relatively limited resources to create scenes that are well-directed.
Andrews shows off some nice camera work and drone shots and the film is at its best when it’s either Abbott or Keoghan sneaking around a field under the cover of darkness and the viewer has no idea what’s happening next.
If you head into Bring Them Down with the understanding most of the film’s budget went towards the stars it becomes a bit easier to swallow the pill.
Bring Them Down is the most frustrating film to review; the good parts make the film worth watching but the parts where it falls down make it maddening.
Irish cinema finds itself in an interesting zone right now where it was considered a snub that Kneecap wasn’t nominated for an Oscar this year.
In a lot of ways, a film like Bring Them Down getting wide cinema distribution and RTÉ funding is a sign that the Irish film industry is healthy enough to sustain both great films and middle-of-the-road films.
If that sounds like damning with incredibly faint praise, it was fully intended in that spirit.
Bring Them Down is in cinemas from February 7