Six Shooter

As far as short films go, this is near the top of the list. McDonagh (formerly a playwright, here making his film debut) is a master craftsman, able to play several levels at the same time. "Six Shooter" is shocking, heartbreaking and very funny, often simultaneously. The story, in a nutshell, revolves around four people, each suffering a very recent death in their families. As they each deal with the loss in very different ways, they collide with each other, sometimes with words, sometimes with more.

The cast is uniformly excellent, especially Brendan Gleeson as the sad-eyed protagonist and Rúaidhrí Conroy as a ticking time-bomb of a kid. McDonagh's pitch-perfect writing - while not approaching the near-apocalyptic absurdity of plays like "The Lieutenant of Inishmore" - is appropriately bleak. His direction is also assured, showing him to be a filmmaker to watch in coming years.

"Six Shooter" is available on iTunes for two dollars. If you can, buy it. It's truly a great work of modern cinema.

Finally saw this online and wondering what all the fuss is about. Almost whimsical, I couldn't quite believe the darkness at the centre of the story. There are a couple of good lines and the performances are solid – Rory Conroy being the best. Martin McDonagh is a very talented playwright, but on this evidence his directing is a little flat. Film looks and sounds flat too. What struck me about it was the superficiality of it all, the cynicism. However it does have some funny moments and moves along at a brisk pace. I'm not surprised it was looked on so favourably by the academy, picking up an Oscar for Best Short Film – it has hip written all over it. And it is one of the better short Irish films I've seen, complete with twists and double twists and a lot of flippant dialogue. McDonagh is planning a gangster film with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. I'll pay money to see that. He obviously wants to be the Celtic Scorsese. High point a cow explodes. Low point rather tasteless plot line about a baby's death. Brendan Gleeson is in this film.

Having just lost his wife, Donnelly boards a train through the Irish countryside to return home. He finds himself on a sparsely populated carriage with a young man who won't shut up and appears to be looking just to wind others up, and a couple grieving the lost of their baby from cot death. Within seconds of sitting down, the kid starts talking and soon gets tensions rising in the otherwise quite train carriage.

Mere days after it took the Oscar for best short film I took the opportunity to watch this film on Channel 4. A testament to the ongoing work of Film Four, this is a darkly comic film that is bleak and depressing while still providing plenty of laughs. Often "dark comedy" means that a film is just rather film without being funny at all but rather just failing to be taken seriously. However with this film the material is both bleak and intentionally funny at the same time. The plot is exaggerated of course but the writing has enough familiarity to make it engaging and attainable. I can't really describe it very well but the humour is very Irish and I found it funny at the same time as enjoying the brooding nature of what was happening.

As writer and director it must be said that McDonagh doesn't do much wrong; producing a great script but also making the film look very professional and washed out at the same time. The cast are all good. Gleeson is of course the star of the piece and he is convincing as he mourns his way through the film. Conroy is the driving force for the majority and is excellent, working with the script really well. He is funny as much as menacing and I couldn't stop watching him. Support from both Wilmot and O'Sullivan is good and a small role for Gleeson Jr is amusing.

Overall a strong short film that is worthy of the bigger audience that the Oscar may bring. It is dark but still funny, enjoyable but yet brooding. The writing is very good and the cast all "get it", especially a nicely understated Gleeson and a scene stealing Conroy.

"Six Shooter" is the debut written/directed film by playwright Martin McDonagh and now I want to see more of his work.

This film is suffused with death, human and animal; we see or hear about intentional deaths - murder and suicide--, natural deaths --by illness or mysterious causes, accidental deaths, and maybe a few I missed in passing.

Each character deals with death in a different way, from the psychotic to tearful grief to quiet suffering to violent reactions, and the actors portray each fully.

While Brendan Gleeson is the central widower trying to make sense of all these observations of death for his own coping mechanisms, the film is stolen by a motormouth Rúaidhrí Conroy as the most annoying guy to ever be on public transport. He non-stop goes from cheerful to entertaining to manipulative to scary and beyond.

While it does go a bit over the top, the cinematography and settings always ground it in grim reality, with a brief excursion into magic realism.

The Irish scenery outside the railway car windows does look very pretty, in contrast to what's going on inside.

I viewed this film as part of a commercial screening of Oscar nominated shorts.

They showed this on RTE television recently and I watched out of curiosity, it turned out to be much better than expected... Fantastic acting, superb casting and a fabulously brilliant and disturbing story. It's great to see the quality of Irish short films returning to something worthy of an Oscar nomination compared to some of the nonsense perpetrated throughout the past couple of years. Martin Mc Donagh is a quality playwright and this first foray into the world of movie making is a wonderful success to say the least. It's also fantastic to see the raw talent of Ruaidhri Conroy back on screen and with none other than Brendan Gleeson, the master! It's entirely deserving of it's Oscar nomination, fingers crossed for the lads. Thoroughly recommended!!!!