This is yet another gem of an Irish film. I saw it last night at the Israel Irish film festival in Tel Aviv, in the presence of the director, the writer and the lead actor. One Gerard Hurley, although, as he admitted, he is not a professional actor at all. In fact this film, set in County Cork, has only three professional actors.
The story is simple. A sick father "cons" his absentee son in New York into returning to his hometown to help him recover outstanding debts. The interaction between these two is central to the film and Gerard confirmed to me after the film, that the actor playing his father, Karl Johnson, is actually Welsh although sometimes fathoming out his west Cork accent was sometimes difficult.
Along the way, our hero mets a divorcée from New York and a platonic relationship develops until she returns home. A simple story never bores and many of the other players, presumably locals from this small town in Ireland, add to a typically delightful Irish story.
The scenery is fantastic and the whole film, made on a shoestring with help from the Irish film board, was made in 8 days filming in Ireland and two days in New York. Perhaps the only give away is that it never rains once in the film. Its a pity that IMDb does not list all the players because I would like to single out the angelic older little boy.
The film is unlikely to get wide distribution. Its an Indie and it does not have big names or any money for promotion. But if you get the chance, see it, provided you don't find the regular swearing offensive.
One thing I would like to add is about the Hebrew subtitles. Some of you might know the word eejut (idiot for the rest of you). Clearly the subtitle writers did not and could not find it in a dictionary. So there it was in Hebrew, phonetically spelled as eejut!
