Actually, the story really feels rather familiar. John McGill (Conor McCarron) is a bright boy with the potential to do well. He also has an alcoholic father (Mullan) and a big brother who is never out of trouble. John does well at school, despite the hostility/brutality of the establishment, until his well-to-do friend disowns him and he starts to slide into the same gang culture that has absorbed his brother.
Its familiar, but on the whole it works, there is real tension in the gang confrontations and, especially, in the scenes where his dad is drunk. The school scenes work and aren't overused and Mullan has a real sense of period and place in the setting. McCarron also manages to just about hold together the film, pulling off a performance that, paradoxically but reallistically, relies on communicating alot through blankness.
There are misjudged moments, where the imagery overwhelms both character and plot - the hallucinatory scene where Jesus descends from the Cross and tries to strangle John works neither dramatically nor comically. The ending is also a bit on the bizarre side - is it a kind of atonement, heavy symbolism or just an absence of a clue how to wrap things up. And I guess at the end of the day, that is part of the challenge of the movie - Mullan has produced something which should leave you with questions. After all this is a film about Non-educated delinquents where the main character is a high achiever at school.
Overall - 7/10 Not totally original, not totally successful, but gritty, powerful, at times brutal and definitely challenging.
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