What Richard Did

What worked:

• the ambiance and the setting of the movie goes in the right direction in the first half of the movie, good enough for the viewers to understand and sympathize with the lead characters

What did not work:

• the movie did not hit the right mark or at least to the extend to make the audience feel the overwhelming tension of the situation. In my opinion, more could have been done to conclude the movie, maybe a different perspective or more scenes to support the point.

Final verdict: It's okay but not a movie that you need not miss.

I almost enjoyed the film but the dialogue was poor and left the film wanting.To be fair the film did have some half decent acting from a young cast and the film ticked along nicely holding my interest throughout.The setting did seem more like the kind of Ireland i grew up in myself during the Celtic tiger.

I doubt this film will be winning awards but it was a decent watch all the same.So just to have a bit of a moan i have to say my major gripe with the film was how annoying the lead actors accent was.This might be a slight exaggeration but it felt as if every second word that came out of his mouth was "like" it really began to grate on me.I honestly don't think i could have "like" taken much more of it "like" you know what i mean "like".

Lenny Abrahamson directed the excellent low budget Dublin film ADAM & PAUL so I was eager to see what this newer production was like. WHAT RICHARD DID isn't as good as that film, although it has some promise and typically realistic performances. The best thing about it is Abrahamson's moody direction, which makes you feel every moment of a torrid and emotional storyline.

Unfortunately, WHAT RICHARD DID is also rather slow and lacking in incident. The storyline is a very simple one that drags out a bit, especially in the latter half, and the almost entire lack of an ending is a disappointment in itself. It's a very realistic movie with a solid script, and Jack Reynor does well in a complex leading performance. But after ADAM & PAUL I expected more, and what I got was merely adequate.

This film seems to confirm and amplify Abrahamson's (Adam & Paul, Garage) considerable strengths as a film-maker, and, to a lesser extent his frustrating weaknesses.

On the plus side, he is great with his actors, both in who he casts and what he gets out of them. His characters always feel complex and real. He also sets up very convincing, morally ambiguous worlds, situations and people. No easy heroes and villains.

But he also has a tendency to be drawn to melodramatic twists, and those actually make his films less interesting, not more, as it feels like he's trying to force the emotional issues.

In many ways my favorite part of the film was the first 45 minutes before the central incident. Abrahamson is great at observing and capturing the complexities of late teen-age life with subtlety and a fresh eye. These aren't the desperate angry street kids of poverty, nor are they the morally bankrupt idiots we often see rich kids portrayed as. They feel real; they drink, but they're not all alcoholics and stoners. They have sex, but more often than not it's attached to some sense of emotion, at graspings towards being in a relationship. Their parents are flawed but trying. Its people as people, not just symbols, even though subtle issues of class and social standing inform the whole story.

But when it gets to the big twists and the big themes, I felt it laboring more, working at it's effects instead of letting them happen. It's not that the 2nd half isn't good,it's that it lacks the power the set up and situation seems to promise. It sticks to it's ambiguity, but it starts to feel just a touch like an intellectual conceit, not an exploration of darker human truths.

Over the past ten years or so, director Lenny Abrahamson has made something of a name for himself in the Irish film industry. He first burst onto the scene with his feature-length debut, the Beckett-esque 'Adam and Paul', which opened to a positive reception. He followed it up three years with 2007's excellent and downbeat 'Garage', a film which showcased Pat Shortt's capability for a career outside of comedy. After making these two quite different films (both of which showed directorial talent) it would no doubt prove interesting to see where Abrahamson would end up next, and with 'What Richard Did' he has delivered his finest piece of work yet.

One of the most brilliant things about it is how natural it all feels, particularly in its depiction of 18 year old Richard and his peers. Often when it comes to portraying young people on screen, things can feel too forced (aspects of Diablo Cody's work come to mind) or on the other hand become completely misrepresented. This film sees Abrahamson perfect the very difficult technique of accurately depicting teenagers, especially with the way they speak, act, their mannerisms, etc, feeling nothing but natural as if the camera had been placed in the middle of an actual conversation.

At the heart of it all is a terrific central performance by newcomer Jack Reynor as the titular Richard, a popular and achieving school rugby player, living in the upper-middle class area of Dublin. He has to deal with a wide range of emotions and conveys them with nuance and expertise, as we witness how his character fluidly develops as the plot progresses and unfolds. The scene where he confesses to his father about what exactly he 'did', played by Lars Mikkelsen (brother of the stellar Mads) is without a shadow of a doubt, one of the finest pieces of acting of the past twelve months.

Proving to be not a world away from Scandinavian cinema (some likened it to Vinterburg and Bergman) or the films of Michael Haneke, with its consistent aurora of unease and underplayed intensity, 'What Richard Did' is an intelligent, complex and understated drama that confirms Abrahamson's directorial skill and heralds the arrival of brilliant young actor.