Perfectly adorable

Great Film overall

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

An interesting take on the classic battle between church and congregation, and also in the classic way of thinking the best thoughts backfire, especially when you groom someone into being fit to a role, here as a priest, which turns out to be more of a devil.In a poor Irish town called Middletown in the sixties a young boy, Gabriel, is chosen by the priest and the father to be the next reverend of the congregation. When the boy 15 years later comes back as a priest, he is immediately clashing with all of the greedy, playful and sinful things happening around in his congregation. His family and brother is caught right in the middle, running the town pub serving the devil's liquor.It's dark, gloomy, poor and tragic in a stylish way. I liked the tone of this Gothic style film. It has a tension which is a plus, and it also starts interesting. I really like one of the times here; grooming a small boy into becoming an enemy of his own breed of people. You need to love a gloomy Gothic wife to enjoy this. Otherwise it will might be to sad and depressing.The first Tim I saw this I wasn't too keen on the music. I though if was often too loud in the mixing, and a bit misfit to the stuations, and that different music would have helped the story a lot. The second and third time I saw I it, I thought completely opposite. I think the music is great, and catching the theme and situations fabulously. Tragic music, in a classic style, to make the tension the film makers really want to do. Why is the dialects, accents if you like, so different between brothers and family. The ending might also be a question to many. See for yourself.This is TV-director Brian Kirk's first feature film, and also this has a TV-feeling about it. It's what I would say filmed in a TV-style. However, I loved the score. I've heard it, or something very similar in another film, but it's very well fitted of this tragedy.I thought of a old Norewgian saying when watching this, translated into this in English: "When trash comes to honor, it doesn't know how to act."

The film is visually stunning: from the dusty interior of the church with the lighted stove, through the drizzly street and the run-down garage to the blaze that is the climax of the film. It also has a wonderful sense of time, both 1950's (the film's opening) and 1960's. All of the performances are top-class, especially Mathew MacFadyen as the psychotic preacher and Gerard McSorley as the father who finds his own intolerance terrifyingly magnified by his son. What a pity, then, that the story is so ridiculous. For a start, in concentrating on the relationship between Gabriel (McFadyen) and his family, it utterly fails to show how he has managed to hold so much influence on the community. In the church, we see five or six of the main characters at the front, and another two or three at the back, but the rest of the congregation might as well be mannequins: they show no sign of hearing him, heeding him or dissenting from him; at the cockfight, nobody says yea or nay when he disrupts the proceedings, but neither does anybody applaud or condemn when Caroline throws a pint over him; a situation that results in a stone thrown through the pub window is mysteriously resolved by the onset of labour pains. Secondly, Middletown (which isn't actually a town, but a tiny village) seems to lack some essential services, such as police and fire service: murder can only be dealt with by a family member with a crowbar; residents watch an inferno that threatens to engulf the whole town as though they were at the cinema. For that matter, everyday things such as telephones and newspapers are conspicuously absent, the rural community is strangely devoid of farm animals or wheat-fields, and most puzzling of all for a 'typical' North of Ireland setting, there is only one Christian community - not even a couple of Anglicans to season the mix. Even if you're willing to suspend disbelief, the story itself is pretty threadbare, a pale imitation of an A.J. Cronin melodrama. And the music? Well, it's beautiful for the first two minutes, but when the same four chords are repeated non-stop for 90 minutes it gets more than a little irritating. My advice: watch this with the sound off.

This was supposed to be set in the "Bible Belt" of Northern Ireland. Well, as someone who grew up there,and was a child in the era depicted in the film it just didn't ring true! The accents were all over the place - anything but County Antrim/Derry. The church didn't resemble any I have ever seen. "The Church of God" is a pentecostal denomination but the one in the film was certainly not pentecostal! The elderly minister at the beginning was dressed in the robes of the Church of Ireland (Anglican)- and no C.of I. would call itself "The Church of God". The minister was often addressed as "Reverend" - they may do that in some parts of the world but I never heard it when I lived in that area. Ministers were addressed as "Mr ......"This film was very badly researched and cast - fairly typical of Irish cinema - annoying! A film can have a great plot, but if it doesn't look authentic, it is rubbish.

Brian Kirk's debut feature is a beautifully constructed, strikingly shot Gothic thriller that has about it the whiff of ancient tragedy.With classic simplicity the story focuses on a conflict between two brothers, a clash of values and faith that speaks to our own polarised world. As is suggested by its name, the town of the title could be anywhere in rural Ireland of the fifties, a rain-sodden, debilitating, grey knot of streets offering little in the way of hope. The church, which dominates the town as much as the pub, has been led for as long as anyone can remember by Reverend Cray (Mick Lally), a meek, gentle person who, as the film begins, passes the baton onto the incoming minister, Gabriel Hunter (Mathew MacFadyen).Middletown is Gabriel's home, he is returning from a long absence to bring the word of god to his father Bill (Gerard McSorley) and brother Jim (Daniel Mays). What he finds here ignites a spark of righteous fury and indignation; his brother has shacked up with a woman who runs the tavern, in his eyes a den of iniquity and a malign influence on the impressionable townsfolk. Spurred on by this aberration, he vows to cleanse the populace of vice and sin, at whatever cost, a moral quest at potentially violent odds with his brother's secular choice of life.This is taut, lean film-making without an ounce of fat on its windswept bones. Daragh Carville's measured screenplay builds on the initial premise, tightening the tension screws, until the finale reveals him to be a writer with the courage of his convictions. The chilly sense of time of place created by Kirk, the fine performances he has drawn from his actors, and the austere photography from Adam Suschitzky, which does beautiful things with the colour grey, combine to create an absorbing film whose message on the dangers of religious fundamentalism holds much currency. – David O Mahony (Dublin Event Guide)