Movie Reviews
So who are all these people, all these stories? Most of them you won’t recognize because they’ve either been in too few movies, or they only make films in Europe. This all takes place is Ireland with thick, thick accents and actors we’ve never seen. You will notice Colin Farrell and maybe Cillian Murphy (“28 Days Later”), and if you’re extremely observant Shirley Henderson, who was Moaning Murtle in the second “Harry Potter” movie. But other than that, unless you really know you’re stuff, this is all brand new.
Farrell plays a petty thief named Lehiff. Murphy and David Wilmot are John and Oscar, two friends who hate their lives, their job, and, more notably, their boss. Colm Meaney is a conceited cop name Jerry who thinks himself to be the best cop to have ever lived. He persuades a documentary filmmaker to make a film about his life “on the streets”. Brian F. O’Byrne is the filmmaker. Deirdre O’Kane is Noeleen, a twenty-something woman who stole a man from his wife. Her sister is Shirley Henderson, who plays Sally, a girl desperate for approval. The irony there is that she’s her worst critic. Kelly Macdonald is Deirdre, the woman whose husband was stolen from her from Noeleen. Those are the main characters.
I leave you there because one of the joys of watching “Intermission” is to find out how all these people connect. What’s amazing about it is that in all those directors I mentioned up above, none of them have nearly as many characters to handle as we have here. By the end I was forced to bandage my jaw from hitting the ground so hard.
Writer Mark O’Rowe and director John Crowley are a promising new team. I admire this film, more than anything else, for its ability to use drastic and sometimes brutal situations to produce laughter. Almost all these characters are tangled up in love – desperate for someone to love them back, but caught in that darn unrequited part of it. So apart from being pulsing at times, and gut-burstingly funny the rest of the time, this is also a story of love, and how far people will go to get it. That in itself is funny because the poster for “Intermission” would lead to think it something totally different.
Looking back at it now, I find it amazing how well “Intermission” works out. It’s really so complex that it shouldn’t work at all, but this writer and director are well aware of that; in fact they take full advantage of it, which is what is so surprisingly original about it. From start to finish, “Intermission” is fast, funny, and nothing short of extraordinary. ****