Movies you may have missed: Calm with Horses (2019)
“I say all families have their problems.”
One part social realism, one part film noir, Calm with Horses hits that sweet spot where a crime saga is just as believable as it is thrilling. Nick Rowland’s debut feature does something special - dispels narrative irony for a simply told small-town crime story that sizzles with natural chemistry.
Pulled from the pages of Colin Barrett’s short story collection Young Skins, Calm with Horses (re-titled in the US as The Shadow of Violence) is as much about place as it is about people. Set in the brisk landscape of West Ireland, Rowland manages to integrate many motifs of film noir (power, corruption, entrapment) seamlessly into the unique, isolated life of a rural Irish community.
We follow Arm (Cosmo Jarvis), an enforcer for the Devers crime family, whose job consists of brutally beating locals who fail to please his terrifyingly unpredictable crime bosses. Jarvis is so believable as a heavy-headed ex-boxer with a damaged past that there isn’t a false note in his soft, brooding performance. He’s part Jake LaMotta, part Lenny Small, a slow thinking diamond that’s all heart and plenty of muscle. Already a washed up boxer who killed a man in the ring, Arm is now trapped into working for a ruthless crime syndicate that is seemingly always aware of employee betrayals.
He is also in the midst of repairing his relationship with ex-girlfriend Ursula (Niamh Algar) and his young autistic son Jack (Kiljan Tyr Moroney). Whilst making one last attempt to be a good father before Ursula and Jack depart to Cork for a better life, Arm must maintain his tough exterior for his job whilst internally his familial love is blossoming towards a softer, kinder man.
But as we know, being a better man in the corrupt world is never easy. In the spirit of forgiveness, Arm makes a decision that we already know will bring him considerable consequences. And yet whilst being predictable, the film excels because of the exquisite balance between genres. The relationship between Arm, Ursula and their son are raw, combative, loving, and full of contradictions. “You remind me of yourself sometimes,” she says. In one scene, Arm convinces Ursula that he can take care of their son for the day, which ends in heartbreak once the reality of managing an autistic child becomes all to clear.
As his family life deteriorates, Arm is also heading towards a collision with the two heads of the Devers crime clan, two men who excel at slow, unpredictable violence. Ned Dennehy is a revelation as the sickly Paudi, a man who both seems too weak to lift a gun but yet capable of tearing a man apart with his bare hands. Joe Murtagh’s screenplay has great fun building tension around Paudi, as multiple characters speak darkly of him before he is ever on screen. And once he does finally appear, the results do not disappoint.
“But again it is the location that elevates Calm with Horses even higher.”
As a well-concealed genre movie, there is something similar here to Cronenberg’s A History of Violence or Eastern Promises. It’s a patient movie, resolutely controlled, never exaggerated, and yet always willing to enjoy the film noir trappings it has created for itself. Director Nick Rowland said on the Film Ireland podcast that his goal was in part to take Urban Noir and transfer it to the Irish West. He succeeds abundantly as once you are hooked on the contradictory characters, the straight-forward noir plotting becomes more engaging. This isn’t a story about bad people doing bad things, but rather a story of gray people struggling to do better things.
But again it is the location that elevates Calm with Horses even higher. The story of the killer with the heart of gold could be set anywhere, in any city or town. And yet to see it set in the windy climate of the Irish West seems greatly to underline the isolation therein. There is so much space outside the city and yet so little room to escape your own problems.
The film does two things: entertains with the conventions of genre and still provides compelling human drama that rings authentic. To watch both is a treat.
