Premise: A man attempts to get his family out of their bad situation by competing in a bare-knuckle free-for-all brawl.
To some degree, I failed to meet this movie at its level. For some reason, I spent most of the movie resisting the idea that the climax really was a donnybrook for a cash prize. I've been led to believe that the first rule of fight club is that you don't tell anyone about fight club. Making an event about it seems wrong. As a result, I was a little confused throughout the movie. Or perhaps it's better to call it disbelief.
This movie revels in how ugly and gnarly it can be. Jamie Bell is a former Marine living in a trailer park with a wife who is trying to kick a meth habit. He's pursued by a terrifying meth dealer played by Frank Grillo. Grillo has a much younger sister played by Margaret Qualley, who feels like a concoction from a guy who took the wrong lessons away from Fight Club. She's like a sexy feral puppy. The scene when she has sex with the guy who is tied up right before killing him is...a lot. Then there's Grillo's acts of violence. I don't really get why he has to kill his sister and Bell's son. Like, I guess it really emphasizes that he's a bad dude, but it sure felt excessive.
This is a very bleak movie. It's hard for me to call any of the performances bad, because they all seem to be attempting to match the tone. Bell is brooding. Grillo is angry, raw, and dangerous. At the very least, based on her often-odd Instagram, I think Margaret Qualley saw a lot more depth in her character than I did.
This is an inert movie with occasional explosions of violence. I suppose I should've been more prepared for that with the title. It's my fault for picking a movie because the title was vaguely Irish.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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