‘Bring Them Down’ Review: Christopher Andrews’ Rough Crime Drama Features a Sublime Central Barry Keoghan Performance | TIFF

Whether he’s playing unambiguous scumbags or those who toe the line between good and bad, Irish acting wonder Barry Keoghan always knows how to keep viewers on their toes. With just a flicker of an eye, Keoghan can switch between sympathetic and ominous. While Bring Them Down, which made its TIFF premiere, is just about on his high performance level.

In Bring Them Down, Keoghan plays Jack, a shepherd tangled into a fierce rivalry with both the reclusive Michael (Christopher Abbott, Sanctuary) who’s the ex-boyfriend of Jack’s mother Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone, The Descent), and Michael’s disabled father Ray (Colm Meaney, Layer Cake). After Michael was involved in a car accident that resulted in his mother’s death and left Caroline with a permanent facial scar, the animosity between both families becomes intensified once two of Michael’s prized rams are stolen. 

What begins as a battle for financial prosperity becomes a grueling demonstration of the cyclical nature of hatred and violence. At times, it gets too grueling once it resorts to showing scenes of animal cruelty. While the film is meant to be a violent crime drama about toxic masculinity being a poison and how violence and cruelty only breeds more of it, the glimpses of mutilated animals felt included for the purpose of shock value. Where the story by writer/director Christopher Andrews, which unfolds in a Rashomon-style fashion as it follows the vantage point of both Michael and Jack, conveys its theme more effectively and harrowingly than the act of violence itself is showing how swiftly one can be consumed by violence. What starts off as incidents like Michael showing hostility by harmlessly breaking the headlight of Jack’s car escalates into a literal order for a man’s head. 

The film’s intensity similarly lies in the two central performances. Christopher Abbott is a source of quiet vigor as the guilt-ridden Michael, letting his face express how Michael keeps to himself and shows a willingness to do a good deed when possible yet could physically erupt with the smallest provocation. As for Barry Keoghan, who’s also a scene-stealer in his other TIFF film Bird, he’s transcendent as a man who’s volatile yet, once the movie shifts towards his perspective, is revealed as a susceptible product of a volatile environment. Praise should also go to Colm Meaney as Ray, Michael’s loathsome father who personifies how parents pass on the ugly cycle of antipathy to their own children. 

With the way their performances mostly live in their expressions, both Abbott and Keoghan are the exquisite core of a film where the screenplay relies on the characters’ actions to tell the story more than expository dialogue. Also, a film where the lush landscape provides a vivid visual aesthetic that makes the difficult drama hard to look away from. Even as the rustling winds underscore the isolation felt by our contained characters, the glimpses of the Irish countryside lensed by cinematographer Nick Cooke paint an evocative enough portrait.

As previously noted, there are parts that are still nauseating to watch and could’ve easily been omitted. Plus, its slow-burn pacing and abrupt ending limit it from reaching fuller brilliance. But the two leading performances are enough to make Bring Them Down an engaging watch. For those who especially want to see the sublime Barry Keoghan in his familiar anti-hero mode, this may be worth a view.

Grade: B

This review is from the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. MUBI will release Bring Them Down worldwide.