Trespass Against Us | Little White Lies

Tres­pass Against Us

27 Feb 2017 / Released: 03 Mar 2017

Shirtless man being apprehended by two armed police officers.
Shirtless man being apprehended by two armed police officers.
4

Anticipation.

Two of Ireland’s acting heavyweights go toe-to-toe.

3

Enjoyment.

They don’t let us down. The film around them sometimes does.

3

In Retrospect.

It’s alright, mush.

Michael Fass­ben­der and Bren­dan Glee­son are ter­rif­ic in this stur­dy trav­eller dra­ma from first-time direc­tor Adam Smith.

Nobody is going to tell me that I come from the ass of an ape, or your grand­dad­dy was a fish.” So says Col­by (Bren­dan Glee­son) in Tres­pass Against Us, and while you might take issue with this point of view, Col­by is not a man you’d want to tan­gle with over mat­ters as triv­ial as the ori­gin of the species.

Col­by is the patri­arch of the Cut­ler clan, a fam­i­ly of trav­ellers that has made its home on a rub­bish-strewn cor­ner of Gloucestershire’s green fields. Clad in a black track­suit and usu­al­ly found slumped in an old arm­chair, sur­vey­ing his sur­round­ings with a sus­pi­cious glare, Col­by is a qui­et­ly dom­i­nant pres­ence, occa­sion­al­ly rous­ing him­self to dis­patch his off­spring on lucra­tive ram-raid­ing heists across the county.

This is a plum role for Glee­son with the actor’s gar­ru­lous affa­bil­i­ty slip­ping eas­i­ly into steely men­ace, nev­er more so than in a police inter­view where he taunts the gavvers’ with a mean­der­ing, non­sen­si­cal sto­ry about a goat. It’s easy to see how he main­tains such con­trol over his fam­i­ly, even his eldest and smartest son Chad (a touch­ing­ly vul­ner­a­ble Michael Fass­ben­der), whose desire for a more sta­ble life for his wife and child is the narrative’s dri­ving force.

While it’s hard to ini­tial­ly get over the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance of see­ing these two Irish actors being sad­dled with broad west coun­try accents, the stur­dy, charis­mat­ic per­for­mances that they deliv­er pro­vide a cru­cial anchor for a movie that fre­quent­ly threat­ens to veer off the road.

Two men in casual clothing, one wearing a striped polo shirt and the other a black jacket, standing outdoors in a green setting.

Tres­pass Against Us marks the fea­ture debut for both screen­writer Alas­tair Sid­dons and direc­tor Adam Smith, and their inex­pe­ri­ence some­times tells in the film’s rick­ety struc­ture and jar­ring tonal shifts. Their grip on the char­ac­ters’ moti­va­tion is murky at best and they rarely exhib­it the con­fi­dence of film­mak­ers who have a clear sense of where their sto­ry is going, which is per­haps how they end­ed up with such a con­found­ing­ly mis­judged ending.

There’s also the pres­ence of Sean Har­ris to con­tend with. The actor’s per­for­mance here, as a fer­al halfwit named Gor­don Ben­nett who likes blow­ing things up, is more man­ner­isms than man, and he cuts a rather ridicu­lous fig­ure in the oth­er­wise real­is­ti­cal­ly drawn milieu.

For­tu­nate­ly that milieu is evoca­tive enough to com­pen­sate for such dis­trac­tions, and while Tres­pass Against Us may be a famil­iar crime fam­i­ly saga at heart, the very fact that it takes place with­in a com­mu­ni­ty we’re not used to spend­ing time with in cin­e­ma is enough to make it feel dis­tinc­tive and fresh. The use of ver­nac­u­lar dia­logue and the sense of inti­ma­cy that’s evi­dent in the Cut­lers’ home helps immerse us in their world, and it might even get some view­ers on the family’s side in their run­ning bat­tle with the police (per­son­i­fied here by an exas­per­at­ed Rory Kinnear).

Tres­pass Against Us may be some­thing of a con­fused curios­i­ty, but what­ev­er you say about the film’s var­i­ous virtues and flaws, it’s cer­tain­ly nev­er bor­ing, and it even boasts moments of unique bril­liance. After all, when was the last time you saw a high-speed police chase inter­rupt­ed by the protagonist’s burn­ing desire to buy a pack­et of fags and some Maltesers?

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