A tang of unhealthy blood rises from this flawed revenge-feud drama set within the rural west of Eire from first-time characteristic director Christopher Andrews, during which the viewers may be shocked by male violence however are on the identical time required to sympathise with the male characters’ inside wounded sensitivity. It’s strongly and fervently acted, however for me lastly let down by a weird and nearly farcical flourish of Peckinpah-esque violent horror, which undermines the accessible emotional actuality of what has been occurring, and which doesn’t fairly do justice to the sustained effort required for a selected act of grotesque butchery.
The title refers at one stage to a call to carry livestock down from the grazing hillside to the fields, but additionally implies a horrible, willed disaster. Christopher Abbott performs sheep-farmer Michael, who has maybe inherited a mood and capability for violence from his curmudgeonly previous dad Ray (Colm Meaney); the older man as soon as abused and terrified Michael’s late mom Peggy (Susan Lynch), a state of affairs which created a horrible calamity not directly proven within the film’s prologue sequence. These days, Michael’s ex-girlfriend Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone) is married to neighbouring farmer Gary (Paul Prepared) and so they have a son, Jack (Barry Keoghan). Gary hates Ray and Michael, partly as a result of he suspects Caroline nonetheless has emotions for Michael, and likewise as a result of they’re refusing to promote him a strip of their land that he wants for a holiday-home improvement for which he has rashly taken out loans. So Gary steals (or “rustles”) a few their rams which have strayed on to his land, partly out of spite, partly to promote for much-needed money.
And so the ugly, escalating contest commences, and the movie reveals us one other, bigger territorial implication: Michael and Ray communicate Irish and Gary solely English – and Andrews offers us a story rewind to offer us the consequences from Gary and Jack’s factors of view. Definitely, the movie reveals us the toxic machismo of what’s occurring and stolen rams definitely work as metaphor for poisonous masculinity. But in plot phrases there’s something unsubtle, unconvincing and even absurd in the place it’s all heading.
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