Bring Them Down review – a chilling neo-western

Farming is an unforgiving way of life – to contend with the long hours, razor-thin profit margins and inevitable hardships of caring for land and livestock, one must have a certain hardness about them. Such is the case in Christopher Andrews’ Bring Them Down, where tensions between two shepherding families in rural Ireland have been bubbling under for decades. It’s the sort of conflict that seems written into the fabric of the land, anger aged into an unshakable bone-deep bitterness. At the heart of it is Michael (Christopher Abbott), sullen and near silent, who shoulders the sole responsibility for the farm at the instruction of his acrid housebound father Ray (Colm Meany).

Down the road, rival farmer Gary (Paul Ready) is also struggling, even with assistance from his son Jack (Barry Keoghan). A bitter dispute over land access and stolen sheep brings Michael and Gary back into direct conflict, years after a tragic vehicular incident tore their lives apart, and there’s little respite from the harsh, bloody realities of their enclaved world. Here, the gap between what is felt and what is vocalised is as wide as the ocean; the brute force of familial obligation is the albatross around Michael’s neck, while Jack – naive and in over his head – seeks to change his family’s fortunes in the most ghastly way possible.

Against the harsh beauty of rural Ireland, shot skilfully by Nick Cooke, a contemporary western plays out where the sins of the father are passed down to the son and violence remains a primary form of communication. The film serves as a fine showcase for the talents of Christopher Abbott, here playing a sullen scrap of a man shouldering the weight of the world – he delivers much of his dialogue in Irish, with a convincing accent (no mean feat for an American acting with an Irish cast). Keoghan also impresses as a toned-down version of his familiar ‘lovable oik’, here more flighty – while he projects a sort of confident machismo, it’s soon revealed as a projection hiding understandable horror.

The bleakness of Andrews’ debut might be off-putting to some audiences – it’s a violent affair, with some of that directed at animals – but not of it feels gratuitous, evocative of Shane Meadows’ similarly stony-faced Dead Man’s Shoes. But the most shocking element of Bring Them Down is the emotional truth at its core; Andrews’ observation of how difficult the cycles of abuse are to break is astute, and even the most sensational elements of the plot have a grim plausibility to them. But this is balanced by the empathy that Andrews and his cast show; as well as being a heart-in-mouth neo-western, Bring Them Down is a compassionate – but never condescending – interrogation of male violence and its ramifications. It’s a barnstorming feature debut for Andrews, and for Abbott it’s yet more evidence of what a compelling, underrated screen presence he is.