“The Shadow of Violence” is set somewhere in rural Ireland, where the green land meanders and the blood runs fast. There, an ex-boxer, Douglas Armstrong (Cosmo Jarvis), dispenses regular punishment to those who may or may not deserve it. He’s nicknamed the Arm, because of his bruising strength but also because he has one of those label names that convey something about the character, like the hammering Mike Hammer.
Douglas is a blunt instrument, a fiction forged with humanist ideals and a degree of poetic fancy. He’s the monstrous male, as large as an oak and presumably just as thick, the man whose hulking body and fierce actions define both him and his relationships, inspiring fear and contempt. That there’s more to him than primitive strength is inevitable in movies like this one, which tries to complicate an archetypal Sensitive Brute with melodrama, expressive cinematography and a sense of grace.
The director Nick Rowland locks your interest in early and firmly with a curious, seemingly contradictory mix of beauty and danger, a combination encapsulated by the delicately blurred image of man’s powerful hand. The hand belongs to Douglas and will soon be tightly clenched as it pummels another man’s face. This act of barbarism has its ostensible reasons: The beaten man is accused of assaulting a young woman. But given the savagery of the beating you wonder if there’s something else, something bigger, deeper at stake — a man’s humanity, the soul of a people.
Douglas serves as the muscle for Dympna Devers (Barry Keoghan, a reliable complicating presence), a wily runt who deals drugs for his family’s criminal enterprise. The Deverses are the kind of slow-but-sharp types, all gaping mouths and dead eyes, who routinely crop up in movies that they would be unlikely to see. (They invariably stare at the TV, mesmerized by cartoons and bleating game shows.) Massed in front of the telly like spectators, the women here are largely indistinguishable. The only characters who count, who do things, are the men, including two uncles: Hector (David Wilmot) and the hyper-violent Paudi (a vivid, disturbing Ned Dennehy).
Written by Joe Murtagh, the movie is based on “Calm With Horses,” a tough yet lyrical story by the Irish writer Colin Barrett. The filmmakers have attenuated Douglas’s viciousness, a gentling that makes the character more palatable but also more predictable. Even so, there is just enough ambiguity onscreen, particularly during the movie’s early stretch, that the narrative machinery isn’t too conspicuous. Rowland’s most productive strategy is how he, with the cinematographer Piers McGrail, uses visual beauty to soften Douglas and our perceptions of him, notably by nestling him in the dusky twilight when the world hovers at the edge of visibility.
Douglas is the kind of character that’s raw meat for actors like Eric Bana and Matthias Schoenaerts, who excel at beautiful bruisers. Jarvis doesn’t have the material in “The Shadow” to impress, and it’s unclear from this movie, at least, if he has the ability. One problem is that Douglas never fully makes sense, especially on those occasions when his eyes and mind flicker alive. In his novella, Barrett writes that Douglas has “the knack of detachment” and describes how, even when buried in “a fight, spun and dizzy and snorting sputum, his body bright and ringing,” he could also occupy “a little bubble of lucidity above it all.” Barrett insists on your empathy without soliciting your pity.
In the movie, Douglas’s moments of unconvincing lucidity and flashes of wit and sense mostly just seem like an effort to make the character seem nicer or maybe just more forgivable. The voice-over that he delivers in confessional tones seems similarly calculated to draw you closer to the character, as does some drama with his ex (Niamh Algar) and son. The movie tries to convince you that Douglas is better than his worst self and can transcend the dehumanizing degradations in which he’s mired. But not even the filmmakers seem convinced, which may explain why they embrace baroque brutality topped by a dollop of audience-mollifying sentimentality.
The Shadow of Violence
Rated R for graphic bloody violence. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
