What Richard Did (2012)

I definitely sought this out because I was a big fan of the director's recent film Room. His directorial hand is sort of similar here, in terms of giving a lot of weight and true significant to the little details in character interactions, and in terms of each half of the film being primarily centered around a different development (although the first half of this is basically set-up and character development so the second half hits harder, and boy does it do a great job of that). I thought all of the performances here were very refined and pretty realistic. The actors do a great job of really inhabiting their characters and making the most out of small moments with he director's help. Overall, very effective film, moves along nicely and a very powerful morality act. That ending is genius.

The title of this Irish film, What Richard did, contains the excitement right from before you start watching. A neat trick, if you like to create interest, and this does the trick. The script is based on a novel "Bad day in Block Rock" by Kevin Power, which again was inspired by real events.The film invited us into some youngsters every day Irish life, just outside Dublin. 18 year old Richard Karlsen, obviously the main character, is a sympathetic sports (rugby) guy, and what you would reckon a young alpha male. Irish mother, Danish father, living a normal life. Attractive, serious, sportive and a leader of the pack of youngsters. Not a smoker, but still does, occasionally. Well we're introduced to his holiday life during summer. Happy non important days around a guy with has everything going for him. Even gets a girlfriend, which seems like a perfect match to him.Great acting all over. Jack Reynor is amazing, and so is his father, Danish Lars Mikkelsen, as always. They're important, but the whole cast is brilliant, which tells us what a great instructor the director Lenny Abrahamson obviously is. Very true, very realistically told, and as far away from what would have been told in a Hollywood film as possible. A very accurate portrait. The film does a terrific job in introducing us to the persons gallery. Beautifully told, and obviously very important if you want to make a film like this with a real punch.I love realistically told movies like this. We really get inside Richard's feelings, the agonizing pain he suffers from afterwards. The despair. Slowly told, using a lot of silence, this might not be suitable for the one's seeking action. This is a drama which outright tells what a situation like this is, not putting in extra dramatically points to color up the story. I lived the way the camera is used to express thoughts and feeling, showing how it is to be living with guilt.The film has a very important message. It's very easy to do acts under the influence of alcohol. It may ruin lives in just a bad decision. Things like thick force not only have one victim, is has several, and it'll also easily ruin both the innocence, the friendship and at least a part of the future, making marks which never fully mend. There's many living with this pain around, a pain which will always be there.

Richard Karlsen is the golden-boy athlete and alpha-male of his set of South Dublin friends.The summer between the end of school and the beginning of university is here, and the world is bright and everything seems possible. That is until one summer night, Richard does something that destroys it all and shatters the lives of the people closest to him.....Its a really difficult film to watch, it hangs a low mood from the offset, and just gets more and more maundering as the film reaches its climax.But the subject matter is powerful, and the performances are brilliant, especially the lead. The split decision to kick a man in the head, will haunt the titular character forever.The guilt will stay with him, and his family, but the fundamental thing about the act is the cowardice that was involved, giving a while new meaning to the phrase 'kick a man while he's down'.So there's the added frustration of him doing it out of spite, and the character will always have that, 'what if I'd just walked away?'.There are so many what ifs? In this movie, that it can get bogged down in its own preaching, but other than that, its a solid movie.

I would disagree with some of the reviewers on here that the dialogue is weak or flimsy - it is certainly understated but that's really part of the whole film. When something so dramatic happens to the characters there doesn't need to be a rapid outpouring of feelings and melodramatic soliloquies - in fact by keeping it understated Abrahamson slowly builds up the tension as to what it is Richard is exactly going to do next. There may be several shots of silence in this film, but that doesn't mean they aren't saying anything. There are flashes of brilliance, especially in the scenes between father and son, but I was slightly unnerved/annoyed by the complete lack of mother figure in all of this - the characters are all given some amount of layers which are built upon and yet we see Richard's mother for two short scenes only. I can't imagine that Abrahamson didn't mean for this to be the case but for me it broke the realism slightly - as his mother, wouldn't she have thought something was different about her son recently? It could have added a more interesting aspect to the father as well in that he didn't want to let her in on her son's secret but for some reason she is never dealt with.Overall though, a beautifully tranquil soundtrack and a cinematography of rustic, windswept Dublin outskirts add to the haunted performance by Jack Reynor to make a slow building but thoughtful film. I think calling it the most important Irish film of the decade could be stretching it a bit - but it's certainly got me looking forward to Abrahamson's next work, which might well be.