A Belfast Screener's review of Middletown (Oct 2006)

Mrs Q found this review. Thank you!

David Minogue wrote is his blog an review of Middletown which he saw in Belfast on Friday, October 13, 2006. I have included a few teasers, but READ MORE to see the full review.

...As I bringing a friend to see it I asked the staff member who gave me the tickets did she know what the film genre was, to which she replied she thought it was a horror. So I half expected it to be, the then unreleased "Saw III" or William Friedkin's ultra gory forthcoming "Bug" maybe, whereas, both of us squeamish,...

...So I watched this film with a sense of dread but by the end of it left it with the knowing that while it went completely over the top two thirds in it was a very well shot, generally well acted...

...It is well directed by Brian Kirk and the screenplay by Daragh Carville is, for the most part one that keeps the attention throughout. There is a fine supporting cast, all Irish actors,...

...Matthew McFadyen is unrecognisable as his former literary leading man as Darcy...

 

Read more below

Middletown Review

By David Minogue in his blog

Oct. 31, 2006

It is always interesting to get the opportunity to see a film in advance before it's commercial release date, Cineworld cinema in Dublin screen special previews on an intermittent basis. One further aspect of these showings is that the audience isn't aware of the actual film chosen until the film comes on screen. As I bringing a friend to see it I asked the staff member who gave me the tickets did she know what the film genre was, to which she replied she thought it was a horror. So I half expected it to be, the then unreleased "Saw III" or William Friedkin's ultra gory forthcoming "Bug" maybe, whereas, both of us squeamish, would have nipped off to see "Open Season" instead.
"Middletown" is a film set in Northern Ireland, 1950's I assumed, after the Irish wars and before the Troubles, thereby centering completely on the story and specificaly family at hand.
It opens on a shot of a young boy on crutches waiting outside a church for his father and older brother to come back out who are inside deciding the boys future with a priest.
My heart sank straight away.
Yes, it was to be a horror after all, the very type I hate the most. Leatherface, you're forgiven, I thought for a moment.
So I watched this film with a sense of dread but by the end of it left it with the knowing that while it went completely over the top two thirds in it was a very well shot, generally well acted and bleak but not just bleak Irish film. It was not a horror as such but there was one scene I had to turn away from.
The young boy inside the church, Gabriel, is shipped off to be an ultra religious zealot sent on his way by a determined father, played very well by the always competent Gerard McSorley.
While Gabriel went off to save the world in the future the younger brother Jim (Daniel Mays) is left in Middletown with an expectant wife Caroline's(Eva Birthistle), a half built house in what looks like a marsh, and earning a living betting on cockfights in the back of Caroline's family bar and importing cheap diesel down to the South of Ireland (fuel, not designer jeans), the early days of that practice.
The family, the Hunters, are at the heart of the close knit community of Middletown and when the kindly but easy going old minister (Mick Lally)comes to the days of his retirement it is the returning (archangel) Gabriel who is the chosen one to replace. Gabriel, played by Matthew McFadyen, once dashing as Darcy in the last incarnation of "Pride & Prejudice" is brlycreamed, immaculate and no nonsence. His tunnel vision of ridding the little town of all its sins never wavers throughout his many scenes and gets more fanancial as the film progresses.
Alas, it is his own brother, the wide eyed well meaning Jim, in classic cinema Kane & Abel style, who is at the heart of any of the visible wrongdoings in his town and more so the expectant Caroline. Eva Birthistle, here both beautiful and feisty doesn't give a toss about about going to church on Sunday and having the locals flock to her public house afterwards, a practice new to the town since child Gabriel was last amongst them. When she tells him at one point to go to hell you know her cards are numbered.
This film is beautifully photographed, by Adam Suschitzky, in the soft browns and autumnal, dirty colours that evokes memories of my own rural upbringing back even in the 1980's though many may see it as more in the guise of the same "Angela's Ashes / countless other "Irish" films. Every Irish village had some shopkeeper or publician at it's heart, the most well known families in childhood, schooldays. And then of course the parish priest, in this depiction, the minister.
It is well directed by Brian Kirk and the screenplay by Daragh Carville is, for the most part one that keeps the attention throughout. There is a fine supporting cast, all Irish actors, in the form of Bronagh Gallagher as the voice of stirring it all up, Sorcha Cusack as Caroline's mother and Mick Lally as the minister who sees the error in his selection of Gabriel too late to be amended.
Alas, "Middletown" goes off into holy man as Satanic man mid way and then escalates, if you wandered in mid way you may think "The Omen" had another remake.
The main source of imitation is "The Night of the Hunter" which there are many references throughout, not least in the name of the family, the Hunters.
Matthew McFadyen is unrecognisable as his former literary leading man as Darcy but for me he was almost too handsome in the role but, then again, many madmen in cinema such as Christian Bale's Patrick Bateman in "American Psycho" were blessed in the looks dept. He is a one man army here, somehow mental but never completely convincing.
The people in the town swing almost overnight from regular ordinary people to a pack of lemmings, the Hunters been vilified, by one of their own, as what is wrong with "Middletown".
Overall, it is good to see a film where it isn't the sins of the Fathers on the Catholic perceptive and a Northern Irish set drama where you could write the script before you go in to see it.
This film also features one of the worst posters for a film that have ever been used in publicity. Not as in bad design but as in Sight and Sound magazine, "I've seen it now I shall reveal all, way." So look away if you see it.