Movie Reviews: The Winter Lake — filmed in Sligo — is a taut psychological thriller
Charlie Murphy as Elaine Michael McElhatton in The Winter Lake
Too much government is a bad thing, decides Ross Ulbricht (Nick Robinson), a young 21st century libertine who puts his political beliefs into action by inventing the (15A), a ‘dark web’ site on which anything can be sold — although mainly, as it turns out, narcotics.
Utilising Bitcoin and Tor, and thus assuring his rapidly expanding customer base of anonymity, Ulbricht creates ‘an Amazon for drugs’, and gradually comes to the attention of Rick Bowden (Jason Clarke), a DEA agent whose old-school methods are supposedly obsolete in a world dominated by the latest technology. Adapted by writer-director Tiller Russell from David Kushner’s 2014 Rolling Stone feature, the story presents Ulbricht as a naïve idealist who invented Silk Road in a bid to change the world, but who quickly discovers himself way out of his depth.
That’s a generous reading, to the say the least of it, and it means that Ulbricht’s descent from idealistic entrepreneur to Scarface-style thuggery is a little too precipitous to ring true, even if Nick Robinson is well cast as the haughty, callow provocateur who is somehow surprised to learn that a website that thrives on selling illegal drugs might quickly be colonised by dealers peddling heroin and crystal meth. Rick Bowden’s story, which is loosely based on that of a real-life DEA agent, offers a more satisfying arc: the grizzled Bowden, played as a barely functioning burn-out by Clarke, is far more pragmatic about his own limitations and doesn’t attempt to finesse his greed and ambition by dressing it up in philosophical concepts.
Tiller Russell’s script investigates both main characters for what they represent as much as who they are, and the result is a thought-provoking drama that satirises the fundamental human flaws in Ulbricht’s on-line utopia while simultaneously mocking the Sisyphean wastage of the War on Drugs. (digital platforms)
(15A) opens rather ominously, with English teenager Tom (Anson Boon), recently relocated to the northwest of Ireland with his mother Elaine (Charlie Murphy), out scavenging in the fields for old sheep skulls. When he discovers a sack containing a baby’s skeleton in a seasonal lake, Tom is at first shocked, then darkly thrilled, and it comes as no surprise when Elaine reminds Tom, who seems very fond of sharp blades, that they have been forced to move to Ireland due to his latest ‘mess’.
With Tom’s character locked and loaded, writer David Turpin introduces Holly (Emma Mackey), a confident teen who lives on the next farm over with her father, Ward (Michael McElhatton), and who seems inexplicably keen on cultivating a friendship with the sullen, incommunicative Tom …
Don’t be fooled by the bleak countryside setting (the film was shot in Sligo): is pure noir, with the bull-headed Tom as the flawed and beguiled hero and Holly a femme fatale whose antecedents stretch all the way back to Medea. Director Phil Sheerin eschews the usual noir conventions — instead of dramatic chiaroscuro, for example, the lighting here is entirely naturalistic, as befits the drab rural backdrop — and focuses instead on tightening the emotional screw, drawing the respective parents, Elaine and Ward, into a plot that exerts all the malign gravity of a black hole.
The result is an impressive feature-length debut from Sheerin, a taut psychological thriller that blends social realism and coming-of-age tropes into the classic noir scenario, with Anson Boon and Emma Mackey brilliantly gawky and emotionally fumbling as the teenage leads. (digital platforms)
(12A) stars Jaeden Martell as Paul, a 12-year-old who suffers from congenital hypertrichosis, which results in abnormal hair growth on his body and face. When his father Denny (Chris Messina) tries to protect Paul from his daily humiliations by sending him to a special school, Paul finally snaps and sets out on a cross-country trek to find the mother who abandoned him as a baby.
Here, at last, Paul encounters people as weird and wonderful as himself: the carnival owner Mr Silk (John Turturro), the mermaid Aristiana (Sophie Giannamore), and the pirate queen Rose (Eve Hewson, sporting a very fetching eye-patch) who embroils the unwitting Paul in an impromptu crime spree. Writer, Olivia Dufault, plays up the fantastical elements of Paul’s odyssey, introducing each new episode as if it were a chapter in a book of fairytales and populating Paul’s world with devils, dragons and similarly exotic creatures, all of which renders Paul a kind of latter-day Pinocchio as he journeys towards what he hopes will be a life-redeeming meeting with his mother.
Director, Martin Krejcí, frames the story with a deliberately prosaic surrealism reminiscent of David Lynch’s early work, delivering an undemanding but charming celebration of diversity and difference. (digital platforms)
