Bring Them Down review – a chill­ing neo-western

Farm­ing is an unfor­giv­ing way of life – to con­tend with the long hours, razor-thin prof­it mar­gins and inevitable hard­ships of car­ing for land and live­stock, one must have a cer­tain hard­ness about them. Such is the case in Christo­pher Andrews’ Bring Them Down, where ten­sions between two shep­herd­ing fam­i­lies in rur­al Ire­land have been bub­bling under for decades. It’s the sort of con­flict that seems writ­ten into the fab­ric of the land, anger aged into an unshak­able bone-deep bit­ter­ness. At the heart of it is Michael (Christo­pher Abbott), sullen and near silent, who shoul­ders the sole respon­si­bil­i­ty for the farm at the instruc­tion of his acrid house­bound father Ray (Colm Meany).

Down the road, rival farmer Gary (Paul Ready) is also strug­gling, even with assis­tance from his son Jack (Bar­ry Keoghan). A bit­ter dis­pute over land access and stolen sheep brings Michael and Gary back into direct con­flict, years after a trag­ic vehic­u­lar inci­dent tore their lives apart, and there’s lit­tle respite from the harsh, bloody real­i­ties of their enclaved world. Here, the gap between what is felt and what is vocalised is as wide as the ocean; the brute force of famil­ial oblig­a­tion is the alba­tross around Michael’s neck, while Jack – naïve and in over his head – seeks to change his family’s for­tunes in the most ghast­ly way possible.

Against the harsh beau­ty of rur­al Ire­land, shot skil­ful­ly by Nick Cooke, a con­tem­po­rary west­ern plays out where the sins of the father are passed down to the son and vio­lence remains a pri­ma­ry form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The film serves as a fine show­case for the tal­ents of Christo­pher Abbott, here play­ing a sullen scrap of a man shoul­der­ing the weight of the world – he deliv­ers much of his dia­logue in Irish, with a con­vinc­ing accent (no mean feat for an Amer­i­can act­ing with an Irish cast). Keoghan also impress­es as a toned-down ver­sion of his famil­iar ​‘lov­able oik’, here more flighty – while he projects a sort of con­fi­dent machis­mo, it’s soon revealed as a pro­jec­tion hid­ing under­stand­able horror.

The bleak­ness of Andrews’ debut might be off-putting to some audi­ences – it’s a vio­lent affair, with some of that direct­ed at ani­mals – but not of it feels gra­tu­itous, evoca­tive of Shane Mead­ows’ sim­i­lar­ly stony-faced Dead Man’s Shoes. But the most shock­ing ele­ment of Bring Them Down is the emo­tion­al truth at its core; Andrews’ obser­va­tion of how dif­fi­cult the cycles of abuse are to break is astute, and even the most sen­sa­tion­al ele­ments of the plot have a grim plau­si­bil­i­ty to them. But this is bal­anced by the empa­thy that Andrews and his cast show; as well as being a heart-in-mouth neo-west­ern, Bring Them Down is a com­pas­sion­ate – but nev­er con­de­scend­ing – inter­ro­ga­tion of male vio­lence and its ram­i­fi­ca­tions. It’s a barn­storm­ing fea­ture debut for Andrews, and for Abbott it’s yet more evi­dence of what a com­pelling, under­rat­ed screen pres­ence he is.