Glassland ***½ (2014, Jack Reynor, Toni Collette, Will Poulter) – Movie Review

Jack Reynor stars as John, a young Dublin taxi driver who is desperately trying to save his mother (Toni Collette) from an early death through alcohol addiction. He manages to get her into a week’s rehab at a centre run by kindly ex-alcoholic Jim (Michael Smiley) but he needs big euros to pay for a further month’s care at a rehabilitation clinic for mammy.

This gets him tangled up in the world of human trafficking. Will Poulter plays his pal Shane, who’s getting the heck out of town, and wants John to go with him…

Collette and especially Reynor give the kind of extra-special performances writer-director Gerard Barrett’s drama needs to succeed. And it does. It’s compelling throughout, quietly, broodingly and intensely so, with impressively sharp bursts of verbal rage through hurt and frustration for the actors to shine.

Very little happens really, with no sex or nudity or drugs or violence, but the drama’s still there all right. It’s beautifully shot too in strikingly stark images by Piers McGrail.

Reynor received the Special Jury Prize best actor award for his performance at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

© Derek Winnert Classic Movie Review

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