FILMS

CALM WITH HORSES Shot on the west coast of Ireland, which adds a windswept, elemental beauty to the bleakness of its characters’ smalltown lives, Calm With Horses takes crime seriously as a subject. In many respects, it resembles the British kitchen-sink realist dramas of the early ’60s, but instead of working on the factory floor, its troubled antihero is a minder employed by the Devers, a ruthless family of local drug dealers.

The film opens with the taciturn Arm (Cosmo Jarvis), a burly ex-boxer who is sent to attend to an internal matter: after getting wasted at a drunken Devers get-together, an uncle molests one of the family’s daughters. Arm delivers a devastating beating that ought to put an end to the matter. It doesn’t, however, and Arm finds himself drawn even further into the affair by his best friend Dympna