Colum Eastwood (director)
(studio)
15 (certificate)
90 (length)
06 July 2021 (released)
10 July 2021
A stabbed man is taken to a container where he is seen to by a doctor. Not many questions asked and it soon becomes clear that this twilight criminal medical service. Performed by the struck off Jo (Antonia Campbell-Hughes) who contracts out her skills to villains, which in turns allows her to keep up a pretty decent lifestyle.
Calling on big boss Bernadette (Orla Brady) at her house for payment, Jo finds herself at knifepoint when Áine (Amybeth McNulty) pops up in her car terrified. Áine had made a deal, with her boyfriend’s collusion, to sell a kidney to transplant into Bernadette’s dying daughter Lucy (Julie Lamberton). Only they have been tricked and Lucy needs a whole lot more than a kidney. The plan being that as a former anaesthetist Jo would be involved in the operation, naturally very well paid.
Suffering from guilt after the death of her daughter and her estrangement from her husband, Jo is little more than a husk. Something clicks in her and so she sets out to fool Bernadette and get Áine out of Belfast.
The opening sequence of the film with a car driving up a multi-story carpark is excellent and the film overall has a very sleek look in particular the night shots of Belfast. The trouble is the central plot is a bit on the thin side and predictable.
It’s more interesting when writer/Director Colum Eastwood alights on the issues of mothers and motherhood. With Jo and Bernadette sharing traumatic experiences of motherhood and Áine with a locket of her mother. It’s the former two that play on each other as to what they would do and how far they would go.
These scenes elicit some fine performances from Brady, Campbell-Hughes and McNulty as they deal with their respective demons, whereas the rest of the mainly male cast are little more than dodgy so and sos, doing cliched dodgy things.
