The Butcher Boy
by Neil Jordan
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DVD details
Author: Patrick Mc CabeActor: Aisling O'Sullivan, Alan Boyle, Andrew Fullerton, Eamonn Owens, Sinead O'Connor
Director: Neil Jordan
Brand: Warner Brothers
Writer: Patrick Mc Cabe
Producer: Neil Jordan
Writer: Neil Jordan
Other Contributor: Elliot Goldenthal
Producer: Redmond Morris
Producer: Stephen Woolley
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 110 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-02-13
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Model: 58563
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- Hailed coast-to-coast as one of 1998's best films! The director of The Crying Game and Interview with the Vampire crafts this inventive tale of a boy who uses humor, hooliganism and horror to cope with the world around him.Year: 1998 Director: Neil Jordan Starring: Stephen Rea, Fiona Shaw, Eammon OwernsRunning Time: 110 min. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R Age: 012
DVD Reviews of The Butcher Boy
DVD Review: Ugly Step-Sister
Summary: 3 Stars
Much of what makes this a "good movie" comes about because the book from which it comes is a great work of literature, whereas the movie's faults reside solely within itself, arising particularly from questionable directorial decisions. The novel deserves far more attention and respect--even awe--than it has garnered thus far, while the movie, and particularly its direction, are subject to second-guessing, to put it mildly.
Most importantly, the entire tone of the movie is handled incorrectly. These events are not comedic. They are tragic. What's funny about broken dreams, poverty, suicide, alcoholism, child molestation, insanity, and murder? Absolutely nothing! And yet, at every turn, the director attempts to "lighten up" this journey into darkness with silly, happy music to lend a madcap feel to these events, as though none of this really matters. The voice-overs are merry, downright gleeful, in tone. Isn't it funny that Dad is beating Mom again? Oh well, same old thing, ha-ha! The director repeats over and over in his comments to the film that this is a comedy, this is a comedy, as though trying to convince himself, and, to be sure, the novel is not without its savage, opaque humor. But the relative ratio of tragedy to comedy presented in the film is flatly inappropriate, and it creates a disconnect between Francie's actions and the emotional circumstances that help to inspire them. It's as though the director is telling us that these events are too tragic to be portrayed in all their ugliness, so why not lessen the impact with a good ole romp. He doesn't trust us with the truth.
How long do we see Francie in the slaughterhoue? Seconds. Yet the novel shows us just how much the circumstances of Francie's job prey upon his mind. The pigs know they are in a slaughterhouse. They are intelligent enough to grasp that they will die and cannot escape. They smell fear and blood, and we are made to experience this too. The Francie of the novel is awash in blood and death and in the knowledge of these, and yet in the movie only Mr Leddy is shown to kill a pig, and only off-camera. Where is the horror these events should instill in us? It is giggled away.
And Francie's mother's furious cake-baking? It's treated as everything else is treated in the film: a silly quirk, an idiosyncrasy, a slight over-reaction. The novel makes clear her frantic baking is her desperate attempt to control at least some aspect of her tragic life or to run away from it just as fast and as far as she can. Again, this is not funny, should not be treated as funny. We know from the novel, by the way, that Uncle Alo is a fraud and has come to the party hoping to get a little cash...an important fact left out of the film. The film shows him as a misunderstood hero, whereas readers know him to be just another nail in the social consciousness of the family's coffin, as it were.
Comedic tone aside, there are other serious flaws with this film. Did anyone notice that Francie goes to Dublin early in the morning, has breakfast, sees a movie, buys Ma a present, then comes home in the afternoon to interrupt his mother's funeral? This was a very jarring flaw in the film's timeline. We are never shown that he is gone for more than a day. We know Ma was always in a rush, but.....
And Francie beating up two grown men when he himself is about 10 years old? Ludicrous. Taking the actor who played Francie's dad and dying his hair orange to play an older version of Francie? Dumb. Who didn't feel cheated by this laziness on the part of the director?
Buy the book. Read the novel. And yes, watch the movie, too. It's still better than many. But give the credit where it is due: To the strength of the original writer's vision and not to its careless, happy-go-lucky, watered-down cinematic step-sister
Description of The Butcher Boy
Synopsis:Item Type: Unknown Type
Item Rating: R
Street Date: 02/13/07
Wide Screen: no
Director Cut: no
Special Edition: no
LanguageENGLISH
Foreign Film: no
Subtitlesno
Dubbed: no
Full Frame: no
Re-Release: no
Packaging: Sleeve Please note: This supplier will be closed on 11/24, 11/25, 12/26, 1/2 for the holidays. The shipping cut off is 12/10 to try and have the products delivered by Christmas.
You can't write off Francie Brady, apple-cheeked hero of The Butcher Boy, as a bad seed and have done with him. In Irish director Neil Jordan's often-surreal fairy tales, bad seeds grow the fruit of subversive knowledge: A master of blending the everyday with the truly mad and wonderfully weird, Jordan loves to encourage charismatic anarchists--driven by amoral energy and imagination--to attack the status quo with extreme prejudice. Exuberant Francie (Eamonn Owens, making a splendid debut) is a thorn in the side of rural Irish repression and hypocrisy. Better to call this smart, too-sensitive brat an ambulatory Rorschach, an uncensored billboard of his disapproving society's uglier truths and fears. A nonstop standup comedian ("And the Francie Brady Not a Bad Bastard Anymore Award goes to--Great God, I think it's Francie Brady!"), he projects fantasies of '60s cold war paranoia (atomic warfare leaves his village a graveyard of charred pigs), American "cowboys and Indians" pop culture, and Catholic Madonna worship (Sinead O'Connor appears as an earthy Virgin Mary). But Francie's rich fantasy life is no match for reality's "slings and arrows": His abusive da (Stephen Rea) pickles himself in drink, his fragile mother edges closer to suicide, "blood brother" Joe turns Judas, and a punitive stint at a Catholic reformatory ends with our Gaelic Holden Caulfield tricked out in girlish bonnet and ruffles, plaything of an addled old priest (Milo O'Shea). No wonder Francie's ultimately driven to exorcize his own Wicked Witch of the West. (He sees Mrs. Nugent (Fiona Shaw), self-righteous pillar of a callous community, as the cause of his cursed life.) Laced with tragedy and hilarity, great beauty and horror, Jordan's adaptation of the Patrick McCabe bestseller mutates the adventures of Francie Brady--psychotic killer, performance artist, and purest innocent--into a sort of saint's life. --Kathleen Murphy
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