Let's be completely honest from the start here, Calm With Horses is nothing that we haven't already seen done, and done well, in dozens of other dramas from the UK and Ireland. Thankfully, this has atmosphere and performances that make it very much worth your time.
Cosmo Jarvis plays Arm, an ex-boxer who now works as the muscle for a notorious local family. He's often alongside Dympna (Barry Keoghan), and the family appreciates that he will do whatever is asked of him. Until he becomes hesitant about dealing with Flannigan (Liam Carney), a man accused of a transgression that gives him a death sentence. Stuck between his employers and his own morality, Arm is also struggling to be a good father, and trying to accept that his ex-partner, Ursula (Niamh Algar), is ready to move away from the area to somewhere that could be much better for their young son.
While I have seen Jarvis in a number of different movies over the years, I have not singled him out for praise, although he was been consistently good, and great in Lady Macbeth. This is probably his best performance yet though, strong and ready for violence, but also aware of how much better life can be when people can be softer and peaceful with one another. Everyone else here is very good (Keoghan and Algar just as you'd expect, and Carney, David Wilmot, Ned Dennehy, and Anthony Welsh all perfect in their respective roles, whether they're acting scared, scary, or slightly oblivious to the violent world that is just one side-step away from them), but the film belongs to Jarvis.
This might be the first feature directed by Nick Rowland, but he helps himself enormously by trusting Joe Murtaugh to adapt Colin Barrett's short story, as well as assembling a cast of superb talent. Getting Jarvis in place was probably the most important part, a solid anchor point that everything else can be attached to, but everything is treated with due care and a faith in the material.
It may not be the most cinematic work, and there isn't anything I want to highlight, but everything is in service of the script and the acting in a way that is reassuring. Everyone behind the camera has done their job in a way that doesn't call attention to their valuable contributions, and that is sometimes a lot harder to do than it might seem.
Grim stuff, but not without a fleeting ray of sunshine breaking through the gathering clouds, Calm With Horses is a film I would happily recommend to anyone after something moving and powerful. There are one or two moments that come close to being too uncomfortable to sit through, but Murtaugh and Rowland know just how far to take things, and how to keep the central character riveting as he tries to hold in the anger that is constantly beating him up internally.
9/10
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