A slow-burning, sheep-stealing drama (or thriller?) that leans on strong performances but stumbles in pacing and depth. Christopher Abbott is excellent as the brooding shepherd Michael, despite being one of the few non-Irish actors. His accent is convincing, and he even delivers full conversations in Gaelic. Meanwhile, Barry Keoghan, once again cast as a little weirdo, plays Jack, the thieving son of a neighboring sheep farmer.
British writer-director Christopher Andrews feels out of his depth portraying rural Ireland, making the film's script and story feel like an outsider's interpretation-kind of like if Americans made an indie drama about Canadian maple farmers waging a clandestine war over stolen trees. The film takes a real-world struggle-rural economic hardship, generational land disputes-and reduces it to a moody but shallow thriller. It ignores the deeper socio-economic forces at play, instead using its setting and characters as mere backdrops for grim violence and revenge. Worse, the nonlinear structure disrupts any tension it had going for it; instead of crosscutting perspectives, the film awkwardly halts midway for an extended backstory, draining the tension.
There are gripping moments-like an anxiety-inducing tailgating scene at the start-but the overall execution is frustratingly uneven.
