DARTSPOTTING (HERE ARE THE YOUNG MEN)

 

When Rob Doyle's debut novel 'Here Are The Young Men' came out in 2014, many reviewers were struck by what it had to say about the state of the young Irish male.

Peter Murphy in the Irish Times saw it as a rare Irish foray into the world of toxic masculinity explored by Irvine Welsh, Brett Easton Ellis and Dennis Cooper.

Claire Kilroy's review in the Guardian thought it was a rather conservative take on the Celtic Tiger cubs - a parable about the luckiest generation, born and raised at a time of economic boom.

Doyle's novel has been brought to the big screen by Eoin Macken, a 38 year old actor, model and director who has assembled a hot young cast comprising of Dean Charles Chapman, Finn Cole, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo and Anya Taylor Joy.

And if that wasn't enough, Ralph Ineson, Susan Lynch, Conleth Hill, Emmett Scanlan, Lola Petticrew, Noomi Rapace and Travis Fimmel are among the supporting cast.

At the start of Macken's film, we learn that one of the main characters is dead, apart from Chapman Charles' narrator Matthew Connolly.

As Matthew reflects on the events leading to the character's funeral, we begin with a flashback of him appearing before Ineson's principal Mr Landerton on the last day of school.

The headmaster encourages Matthew to make something of his life but instead he meets up with Finn Cole's ne'er-do-well Joseph Kearney as soon as school ends and Ferdia Walsh-Peelo's Rez to embark on a summer of pill popping, heavy drinking and occasional sex.

Meeting Rez in a church where they consume drugs like they are receiving Holy Communion, the boys break into the school to vandalise a classroom, spray painting on a wall and whiteboard.

Kearney, however, recklessly throws a desk through a window and then, as they make their escape via the underground car park, he hovers by Mr Landerton's car which he proceeds to destroy.

The boys are confronted by their old headmaster who tries to appeal to Matthew's conscience.

However the lads ignore him because he no longer wields any authority over them and they are chased from the premises.

Matthew, Rez and Kearney, however, witness the tragic death of a 10 year old girl in a road accident - an event that  impact them in different ways over the course of the summer.

They hang out with Anya Taylor Joy's smart Jen who clearly is attracted to Matthew and vice versa, while Rez is involved with Lola Petticrew's Julie.

While Matthew struggles to open up about the impact of the child's death to his mum, Susan Lynch's Lynn Connolly and takes a soul destroying job in a tyre fitters, Kearney has a strained relationship with his father, Conleth Hill's beer guzzling Mark.

When he is not popping pills or necking vodka or beer, Kearney retreats into a world of grisly video games and sexually violent fantasy, leaving Dublin for Boston to spend time with his brother.

While Rez becomes more sullen in the wake of the 10 year old's death to the point where he attempts suicide but survives, Kearney starts to fantasise about taking someone's life and filming it on a video camera.

Returning to Dublin, he boasts to Matthew that he has killed a homeless man in the US and then tries to involve his friend in playing out a similar fantasy on the streets of his home city.

However as he pursues his perverse fantasy, he pushes Matthew's friendship to a point of no return and triggers events that will have a catastrophic effect on the boys and Jen.

Adapting Doyle's novel for the screen as well as directing it, Macken is not short of confidence or visual panache.

With a soundtrack boasting Primal Scream and Fontaines DC and its nod to Joy Division's 'Decades' with its namee, the Dubliner is clearly reaching for the brio of Danny Boyle's 'Trainspotting' or David Fincher's 'Fight Club' and chic.

Both those films chronicle the adventures of broken young men warped by addiction and dysfunctional family backgrounds.

However, no matter how valiantly it tries, 'Here Are The Young Men' never quite scales those films' heights 

Chapman Charles' Matthew lacks the charm of Ewan McGregor's Renton or the depth of Edward Norton's narrator in 'Fight Club' and Kearney never chills the way Robert Carlyle's Begbie does.

While there are moments of undoubted visual flair in Macken's movie, 'Here Are The Young Men' is just not absorbing enough for the audience to truly invest in its characters.

What we get instead is a collection of rather empty hedonistic adventures strung loosely together by moments of Celtic Tiger teenage angst that, if it were set in America, could be straight out of a Brat Pack movie. 

Of the leads, Dean Chapman Charles and Finn Cole struggle the most with Macken's writing.

Both work hard to nail their accents to the point where they occasionally over pronounce their big roundy Dublin vowels.

Chapman spends most of the movie looking uncomfortable and glum.

Cole also never quite convincingly bags the kind of unhinged menace that he is clearly aspiring to with the sociopathic Kearney.

Wicklow-born native, Walsh-Peelo has no such worries about the accent and he does a decent job as the more sensitive and bookish of the three.

However it is Taylor Joy who again steals the show as Jen, not only comfortably mimicking a middle class South Dublin accent but bringing a real sparkle to the role of a very sharp, perceptive girl who might just offer Matthew a way out of his vacuous, clichéd, hedonistic teenage life.

Lynch and Hill are good value as Matthew and Kearney's respective disconnected single parents, while Lola Petticrew is as dependable as ever as Jill.

However Ineson seems plagued too by accent woes as Mr Landerton, while Australian actor Travis Fimmel turns in a hugely overblown and irritating performance as a brash American TV host who features far too much in overlong warped flights of fantasy inside Kearney's imagination.

Noomi Rapace turns up in a cameo during one of these fantasy sequences, while Emmett Scanlan gamely takes on the role of a Homeless Man who Matthew encounters on the streets of Dublin.

To Macken's credit, he draws out some striking imagery of the Dublin skyline from his cinematographer James Mather who also does a decent job lighting the party and TV studio sequences.

And there is no doubt that Macken, Mathers and film editor Colin Campbell are talents worth nurturing, with a strong sense of cinema that could come good with the right material.

Unfortunately 'Here Are The Young Men' isn't good enough 

It falls short of the right platform for their talents.

But give me Macken's ambition and visual flair any day over the cod Irish Guy Ritchie antics of 'Pixie' or the depressing blarney of 'Wild Mountain Thyme'.

('Here Are The Young Men' was released during lockdown on digital platforms in the UK and Ireland on April 30, 2021)

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