The Young Offenders

Hear­ing that a drug-traf­fick­ing boat has cap­sized off the coast of West Cork dynam­ic duo, Conor Mac­Sweeney (Alex Mur­phy) and Jack Mur­phy (Chris Wal­ley), decide to cycle their way towards def­i­nite rich­es and away from their suf­fo­cat­ing fam­i­lies. Falling some­where between the child­ish endear­ment of Stand by Me and the bawdy bro­mance of Super­bad, direc­tor Peter Foott ven­tures beyond well-trod­den ​‘rebel­lious boys’ nar­ra­tive ground with a charm­ing film that bal­ances com­e­dy and sin­cer­i­ty with­out slip­ping into melodrama.

Lit­tered with pop songs, a ten­den­cy towards cul­tur­al and gen­er­a­tional stereo­types ini­tial­ly threat­ens to under­mine the authen­tic­i­ty of The Young Offend­ers. Yet it is the char­ac­ters them­selves who grad­u­al­ly steer the film’s emo­tion­al tra­jec­to­ry. The script is seam­less­ly strung togeth­er, switch­ing from moments of com­ic absur­di­ty to touch­ing trib­utes to fam­i­ly bond (or the lack there­of) and back again.

The true beau­ty of the film, how­ev­er, lies in its breath­tak­ing scenery, show­ing a side of rur­al Ire­land rarely cap­tured on screen. This lyri­cism is not sug­gest­ed by the rough-hewn urban set­ting of the first half of the film. The two boys are intro­duced as your aver­age dim-wit­ted, crime-com­mit­ting street punks. But as they ven­ture fur­ther away from home, acts of blind, male aggres­sion give way to moments of gen­uine affection.

The two young leads exhib­it a ten­der­ness and spon­tane­ity which enhances the more seri­ous nature of the film. With flaw­less com­ic tim­ing that verges on improv, their per­for­mances a con­tin­u­al­ly sur­pris­ing, filled with unex­pect­ed remarks and inge­nious­ly hys­ter­i­cal ban­ter. It’s a nuanced por­tray­al that evokes the real­ism of Ken Loach cou­pled with the quip­py, cut­ting dia­logue of Mar­tin McDon­agh (á la In Bruges).

Boil­ing down to a finale that strikes a sat­is­fy­ing note between intense and hilar­i­ous, the film ends on a cathar­tic note. Our two heroes exceed expec­ta­tions and, although the musi­cal cues some­times feel forced, the pair deliv­er a sat­is­fy­ing emo­tion­al pay-off which teach­es a valu­able les­son: fam­i­ly and friend­ship are at the root of all our lives, and we each rely on the sup­port of those who believe in us no mat­ter how big a mess we get our­selves into.