Intermission
by John Crowley
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DVD details
Actor: Cillian Murphy, Colin Farrell, Colm Meaney, Kelly Macdonald, Shirley HendersonDirector: John Crowley
Brand: MEANY,COLM
Producer: Alan Moloney
Producer: Des Martin
Producer: John Erraught
Producer: Jonathan Sehring
Producer: Neil Jordan
Producer: Paul Trijbits
Writer: Mark O'Rowe
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 105 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-10-19
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Product features:
- TESTED
DVD Reviews of Intermission
DVD Review: Mixing characters and plot stories create a great whole
Summary: 5 Stars
It was certainly an ambitious plan to try and somehow thread together the lives of 54 different characters in eleven storylines (according to the rubric on the DVD, anyway!), irrespective of however fleetingly or intimately any particular set of characters interacted. John Crowley directed and Mark O'Rowe wrote the screenplay for this movie, set in Dublin, Ireland, consisting of entirely homegrown actors on their home turf. It was perhaps no accident that Colin Farrell, now established as a star in Hollywood through his performances in movies such as "Phone Booth", is seen right at the beginning.
Like many of the characters seen in the movie, Lehiff (Farrell) has a talent for trouble with the law, hence he sings the song, "I Fought the Law" (written by Sonny Curtis), at the end of the movie (much to moviegoers' surprise, I imagine). His character is therefore incomplete without doing something criminal, and, indeed, many, if not all, of the characters in the movie seem totally dysfunctional and as incomplete as he is, albeit in their differing ways.
Lehiff's nemesis, Garda (police) detective Jerry Lynch (Colm Meaney of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" fame), feels incomplete without showing himself off as a man who constantly fights the "scumbags" on Dublin's streets, and enlists the help of Ben Campion (Tomas O'Suilleabhain), an ambitious film-maker and the bane of his "go-softer" boss who considers Lynch too nasty a subject to be shown on a mainstream "docusoap" series on Irish terrestrial TV.
Ben is told to focus his attention on Sally (Shirley Henderson) who helped passengers after their double-decker bus spectacularly crashes on its side. Sally herself feels incomplete because of her "Ronnie" (moustache for non-Irish people!) and bitter because of her sister Deirdre (Kelly Macdonald) flaunting her new boyfriend, Sam (Michael McElhatton), a bank manager who has left his wife of 14 years, Noeleen (Deirdre O'Kane), who, feeling totally shocked, questions her own self-worth as a woman and a wife.
Deirdre had been the girlfriend of John (Cillian Murphy), whose arch-nemesis is the overbearing supermarket manager Mr. Henderson (Owen Roe), who feels incomplete without feeling good about lording it over his "minions". John feels utterly devastated and incomplete without Deirdre and will do anything to win her back, even though he initially turns to Noeleen, of all people, whom he meets at a singles' club for the middle-aged, owing to his need for "companionship" - despite his earlier hypocritical criticism of his ex-girlfriend to her face for doing much the same thing with Sam, upon whom he turns his hatred in a heated phone conversation when he wants to speak to her.
He then gets himself involved in an absurd plan: kidnap Sam, force him to go to his bank, and get ransom money. This plan involves Mick (Brian F. O'Byrne), the man who had driven the bus which crashed, and Lehiff. As might be expected, things go awry when Sam, who has the money, gets assaulted by an enraged Noeleen on the street, so Mick and John flee the scene without their money.
Mick feels incomplete without gaining his revenge on the boy, Philip (Taylor Molloy), who had lobbed the stone into the windshield, causing him to serve and crash the bus he was driving (and for which he got fired). However, again things do not go quite his way, and he ends up learning a bitter lesson. As for Lehiff, Lynch, who feels incomplete without nailing him, corners him in an open field, and the scene is set for a confrontation that ends in a way nobody expects.
One could say that O'Rowe and Crowley may have been a little over-ambitious in trying to make out as if all the people in the film just had to have some interaction with at least one or two other people - it would be interesting to draw a "spider-gram" on the back of an envelope in an effort to find out how everyone fits in with everybody else.
Nevertheless, O'Rowe and Crowley are largely successful in producing an enjoyable black comedy, even if one could question the use of so many f-words and c-words (as Lynch likes to do prolifically) in a movie from a country otherwise not seen very often in movies (MGM distributed this one to a wider audience). Equally, one may be a little concerned at the violence (and blood) seen in the movie, as Lehiff shows a shop assistant (at the start of the movie) and Deirdre (albeit while he is masked as he keeps her in the house during the kidnap/robbery operation) what he is prepared to do to people. Yet he is a hardened criminal and the exclusion of his brutal methods would be tantamount to sugarcoating the idea that crime should be "blood-less". (People can, after all, end up shedding more blood when accidentally falling off their bicycles.)
Describing the film would not be difficult with words like "funny", "fresh", "fabulous", "fantastic" and "fascinating". Humor is an element that runs right throughout the movie as the characters have to sort out their otherwise incomplete lives as they have to deal with the harsh realities of being in love, out of love, in a job that one hates, suddenly out of a job, sticking a finger up at authority, taking the law into one's own hands, each wanting a better deal in life than he or she can get at present. In all, it is a very entertaining movie about ordinary people leading ordinary lives with some extraordinary plot twists and turns.
Description of Intermission
Fifty-four characters and eleven storylines intersect with "dazzling" (San Francisco Chronicle) results in this "raucously funny and compellingly gritty" (BBCi) comedy. An ingenious tale of small-town delinquents, shady cops and warring lovers reunited by a bizarre kidnapping plan, Intermission is a dark, edgy, "very funny study of love, lust and petty crime" (Sight & Sound)!The rough-edged vitality of contemporary Irish filmmaking is readily apparent in Intermission, a deliriously ambitious black comedy in which 54 characters and 11 plotlines compete for consistently impressive screen-time. In a dazzling display of audacity, screenwriter Mark O'Rowe and first-time director John Crowley jump from one plot to another, tangling their characters in an infectious series of intersecting events, shifting from scenes of brutal violence, poignant compassion, and richly dark humor, and somehow managing to make it all fit together in a miraculously coherent tapestry of romance, crime, and authentic Dublin atmosphere. Colin Farrell and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine alumnus Colm Meaney are the familiar stars here, and they're in peak form on native soil, but the entire cast shines in equal measure, all of them playing malcontents striving for something better in a world that's simultaneously harsh and hilarious. From start to finish, Intermission is so full of surprises that you'll want to see it twice, just to marvel at the way its puzzle fits together. --Jeff Shannon
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