The distorted lens for the narrative comes in the person of the boisterous, apple-cheeked Francie Brady (Eammon Owens), who throws an idiosyncratic bravado in the face of the realities of his impoverished small-town existence. His dad (Stephen Rea) is a sporadically employed trumpeter and frequent drunkard; his mother (Aisling O'Sullivan) is mentally fragile, and Francie refers to her frequent post-breakdown institutionalizations as her going "in the garage." Whatever anchors Francie possesses come from his best friend Joe (Alan Boyle) and their hours of time shared in playing cowboy and other kid pursuits. The world's evils become personified for Francie in the relatively well-off neighbor Mrs. Nugent (Fiona Shaw), whose primary crime stems from her impatience with the incessant bullying that Francie and Joe submit her hapless son Phillip (Andrew Fullerton) to.
It all starts going off the axis for Francie when he returns home after an impromptu runaway to arrive in the midst of his mother's funeral procession. Thereafter, his pranks on the Nugents take ever more violent and destructive shades, leading to his inevitable exile to a church-run correctional facility. During his incarceration, he manages to finagle a position of altar boy, begins to see visions of an unusually profane Virgin Mary (Sinead O'Connor), and figures in the disgrace of a pedophile priest (Milo O'Shea). While the latter ensures that he makes a return to the neighborhood, it's a hollow victory, as he finds his one-time blood brother Joe wanting to distance himself from an ever-more apparently unbalanced Francie.
Although Francie elects not to disturb his father from the easy chair where he collapsed and died, he can only keep up the ruse about Dad's visit to London for so long, and he's soon consigned to the "garage" that his mother frequented. Having escaped, he finds that Phillip has taken his place as Joe's best friend, and Francie elects to finally settle his differences with Mrs. Nugent in a jaw-droppingly disturbing fashion.
Jordan collaborated with novelist Patrick McCabe in adapting McCabe's 1992 book to the screen, and the director did a masterful job in creating a sense of time and place in rendering a small community steeped in religious tradition as well as the disquiet stemming from images of impending nuclear holocaust courtesy of that new medium of television. Throw in a richly-detailed and unprecedented characterization of a young child with the most tenuous of holds on propriety, and the end result is memorable.
Jordan went with local unknowns in the casting of many key roles, and he found a diamond when he chose Owens to limn Francie. The subject matter was a lot to have to ask a young actor to shoulder, and Owens did so in a manner both natural and compelling. Jordan regular Rea provided the other tent-pole performance, as he also provided the film's sardonic voice-over (and appeared in the denoument) as the adult Francie. Acknowledgments also have to go to the equally-effective Boyle as Joe (Jordan had contemplated flipping Owens and Boyle in their roles), and Shaw, who hit the right notes of comic villainy in depicting Mrs. Nugent.
Warner presented the film in 1.85:1 enhanced widescreen, and the mastering job does justice to cinematographer Adrian Biddle's crisp capture of the mostly muted palette of Francie's world. The primary plus in the extras package is a contemplative feature-length commentary from Jordan that touches on all aspects of the production, from his collaborative process with McCabe (who appears onscreen as town drunk Jimmy the Skite) to Shaw's grappling for a handle on her character. The special features are rounded out by just over three minutes' worth of deleted sequences and the original theatrical trailer.
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by Jay S. Steinberg
