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Darren Healy stars in this mythic parable set in 1998 Dublin. A flawed but ambitious Irish movie set in my home town.Neil (Darren Healy) gets out of jail and tries to see his son, the mother tries to bar the door of her flat to him, slams and things rapidly get out of control from there.The director throws everything including the kitchen sink at the cinematic wall in the hope that something sticks, and surprisingly most do, there are moments of glaring awkwardness in the script and some dreadful miscasting (specifically Viviana Verveen as Nuala.) "Crushproof" works well as cinematic metaphor of the harshness of todays Dublin underclass and their dead end lives and our own ancient heroes who fought like lions despite the inevitable violent death. Looks like someone finally saw the parable between the "thug" mentality of Dublin's Lumpenproletariat and our own mythic heroic past. The spirit of "Hyla" lives on.Good soundtrack and some great performances, however the director tried too many different techniques, "Crushproof" manages to be both stylised and verite at different points depending on what was thought was needed for the scene. Unfortunately the styles do not seamlessly blend. Also at some points the mixture of the "humour of the damned" and the more serious scenes are juxtaposed to the point of being jarring and not helping the flow of the film. Still all in all I would give this a seven being all at once in touch with both our ancient and modern Irish identities. Many, many great and truthful moments, that do not all hang together comfortably as a film.Peace and Hope FatherCrow
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