Movie reviews: Calvary, Last Days on Mars, No Limbs, No Limits

Blessed be the pure in heart, the Sermon on the Mount tells us, for they will see God. Such seems to be the immediate fate of genial parish priest Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson) in John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary (15A), which opens with the Sligo-based Fr Lavelle hearing a confession which includes the promise to kill him in a week’s time. It’s not that Fr Lavelle is guilty of anything; the whole point, he is told, is that he will be killed for being a good priest, thus throwing into sharp relief the guilt of the Catholic Church in relation to its behaviour on the abuse of children. It’s a dramatic, provocative opening, but McDonagh — who writes and directs his follow-up to The Guard (2011) — appears to revel in the role of provocateur, as Fr Lavelle’s parishioners — among them Chris O’Dowd, Aiden Gillen, Dylan Moran and Domhnall Gleeson — queue up to insult and degrade the priest and his position in the community. Not content with skewering the Catholic Church, McDonagh also unleashes a whole fusillade of broadsides at modern Ireland, blasting the banks, the property developers, the landowners and the politicians. Sounds fun, and for a time it is: McDonagh’s quirky characters are edgy, angry and brimming with bile, but also capable of hilarious whimsy. The uneven tone soon begins to grate as the story drifts away from Fr Lavelle’s plight in favour of pub-bore polemics from the ludicrously over-the-top supporting cast. Gleeson puts in one of the most thoughtful performances of an already excellent career as Lavelle, a former married man who has to contend with comforting his emotionally distraught adult daughter (Kelly Reilly) as he tries to figure out who might want to kill him, all the while struggling with his own faith.