Irish director Mark O’Connor’s film is a two-for-one deal. It starts out as a serious well-researched drama about an army veteran with PTSD sleeping rough in Dublin, and ends in bloody revenge, with Aidan Gillen in ultraviolent mode and gangsters drilling holes into each other’s kneecaps.
The movie is grounded by a rock solid performance from the film’s co-writer Luke McQuillan as former soldier Danny, who loses his family and home after a tour in Afghanistan. There’s a scene early on that feels horribly truthful about the day-to-day reality of being homeless: late one night, three lagered up youths humiliate Danny for a laugh – forcing him in front of the camera as they shove a coin into his hand. The shame on his face as they film him is harder to watch than the electric drills later that come later.
Flashbacks show us how Danny’s family life fell apart. There was an accident involving his little boy when Danny was looking after him; so when he meets a teenager called Will (Daniel Fee) sleeping in woods, Danny’s instinct is to protect him – a second chance to get it right, perhaps. There is nothing particularly new about this story, but McQuillan plays Danny with real care.
Here’s where Gillen muscles in as a gang boss called Power, a man who takes a spider’s pleasure in getting people exactly where he wants them. Teenager Will was dealing drugs for Power, until his mum flushed his stash down the loo. Now he’s in trouble. Gillen plays Power with his trademark soft-spoken menace, but somehow it doesn’t stick here, even with the added nastiness of his character having a sadistic habit of killing dogs. At times this is a film that doesn’t feel like quite enough, at others it’s a little bit too much.
• Amongst the Wolves is on digital platforms from 2 June.
