Amici per la vita

Two Irish lads move in together. Vincent is a well-balanced gay art student and Shane is a sheltered and shy civil servant. Through a makeover a la "Queer Eye," Vincent helps Shane gain self-confidence. Unfortunately, Shane falls into the wrong crowd and starts trafficking drugs.

Is this a makeover movie (complete with themes about being true to yourself) or a movie about the Irish drug scene? It tries to be both, but it never finds a good balance. It ultimately strives to be about the relationship between the two young men, but it never really succeeds because the relationship is never fully developed for the viewer. This problem could have been easily avoided--two very endearing deleted scenes should have been kept in the film for sure. There are some random scenes that seem to come out of nowhere, but it all pieces together nicely (perhaps too nicely) in the end. The lead character does some awful things, like being part of a hit and run where a woman is terribly injured and a man is severely beaten when trying to call the cops, but in the end it is all okay because he's a likable guy with a fabulous gay roommate who has unexpectedly got the hook-up. Oh, please. Still, the overall theme of being yourself and true to yourself is great, even if the movie goes about expressing it in a half-assed way. And both lead actors are irresistibly cute.

cute actors. moral lessons. eulogy to friendship. the wrong way of the shy and naif good boy, not real different by Pinocchio. a beautiful film. or, more exactly, a reasonable good film. who seems say everything. about all. and the choices to explore different circles of life is not real inspired. but the final, like in many similar cases, seems save the errors and the large dose of good and ambitious intentions. result - a nice story about the courage to become yourself. nothing new. maybe, too familiar. but useful as one of stories who seems be a chain of scenes discovered by a stranger on the window to street, in the evening.

Although it sounds like the premise for a formulaic sitcom, Cowboys and Angels turns out to be something entirely different. This big-hearted crowd pleaser, written and directed by David Gleeson, centers on Shane (Michael Legge), a lonely 20-year-old misfit who moves to the big city and takes on a gay roommate, fashion-design student Victor (Allen Leech).

After some queer-eye advice from the popular, outgoing Victor (new haircut, new wardrobe, new attitude), Shane begins to emerge from his shell. But an incidental friendship with the drug dealer who lives downstairs threatens to wreck his life just as it is beginning to come together.

Refreshingly, Cowboys and Angels uses its characters as people, not types, on its way to detailing Shane's gradual coming-of-age. Even with its brief running time, the movie feels slight and padded: The story technically ends 10 minutes before the movie does. But the lack of the expected gay-straight clichés puts you in a forgiving mood, and Gleeson's upbeat, humanist approach takes care of the rest.

It's rare to come across exceptionally well done movies like this one that manage to stay hidden for years? Cowboys is a genuine rare gem.

This cleverly written Irish drama is highly entertaining and realistic. But it's tilted just a few degrees off axis making it fresh and unpredictable. This is familiar subject matter given a genuine makeover with a few Irish twists. It's the sort of film that makes wading through all the junk at film festivals worthwhile.

On a more technical level, it never feels particularly low budget. The lead actors do a very credible job. The cinematography is honest and the sound, in particular, is way above average for this genre. There are a few stray threads hanging off the seams here and there, but the story and main characters are easily captivating enough to keep your attention elsewhere.

Others obviously consider this a gay themed movie but I don't agree. There's no gay romance and only a brief moments or hints of gay intimacy. There might be a tiny element of "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy" here, but it's just one of many small subplots. It's much more a coming of age movie--and, as such, it clearly excels.

It's a low-budget film with little in the way of a storyline and includes some diversions that have little bearing on the overall product. All of this would lead you to dismiss it as a lightweight offering. However, one of the main functions of a movie is to capture a sense of time and place and, in this context, Cowboys & Angels succeeds brilliantly. Even though it was made just two years ago, it has already found a unique position in time that viewers can relate to. It is set in my hometown of Limerick at the turn of the millennium as Ireland was moving from being the poorest country in western Europe to one of the wealthiest. Much of this happened to the bemusement of a population which had grown up on unemployment and emigration and now suddenly found itself surrounded by opportunities it had only dreamed of up to then. And along the way, a certain innocence was lost as a bulging generation of baby-boomers (Ireland's birthrate peaked thirty years later than its neighbours)worked its way through the buzz and the heartaches of transformation. In some ways, it resembles growing-up classics like American Graffiti and Rebel Without a Cause but set in a very different time and place. The main character, superbly played by Michael Legge, captures that wide-eyed innocence that the country was going through at the time while the photography picks up the youthful vitality of the city. While, on the surface, it may be an unremarkable tale about an unremarkable place, the ambiance is absolutely spot-on. Cowboys & Angels is perhaps the most representative contemporary feature film to come out of Ireland during the past decade.