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One thing I didn’t have on my lifetime cinematic bingo card—and I bet it is not on yours either—was Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson become the 21 st century’s answer to Laurel and Hardy. And yet. With 2008’s “ In Bruges ,” and now “The Banshees of Inisherin,” the Irish actors, under the writing and directing aegis of frequently pleasantly perverse Martin McDonagh , display a chemistry and virtuosic interplay that recalls nothing so much as the maestros of the early 20 th -century Comedy of Exasperation.

This being a McDonagh work, it’s a comedy of mortification as well as exasperation. It begins with a beautiful overhead shot of the title Irish island, all green below a clear blue sky (in this picture it only rains at night, which, considering actual weather patterns in Ireland, places the film in yet another genre, that of fantasy). The Carter Burwell score evokes idyllic times, and we see life is rather easy for Pádraic (Farrell) a milk farmer who lives with his sister in a modest cottage and, apparently, calls on his old friend Colm (Gleeson) just about every day at two. Before he sets out, he makes a remark about Colm to his sister Siobhán ( Kerry Condon ), who sarcastically replies, “Maybe he just don’t like you no more.”

This turns out to be a bit of inadvertent prophecy. Because Colm rebuffs Pádraic. Over the course of several discussions, we learn that Colm has come to find Pádraic dull (and the earnest fellow’s conversation is indeed limited, if amiable), and that he believes he’s got better things to do with his time, like compose songs on his fiddle. When Colm goes to confession at the island’s church, he reveals he’s also suffering from despair. He’s suffering from quite a bit more than that.

“Banshees” is set in 1923, and several times its characters discuss hearing guns going off on the not-too-far-away mainland. The conflict between Colm and Pádraic serves as a handy metaphor for Ireland’s Civil War at that time, but the movie works best when it doesn’t foreground that metaphor. Which becomes rather grisly, as a commentary on a particularly Irish kind of obstreperousness. As in: Colm tells Pádraic that if the latter continues to talk to Colm, or at Colm, after Colm’s made it clear that the doesn’t want Pádraic’s company or conversation, Colm will cut off one of his fingers. Now keep in mind that Colm’s a fiddler who wants to continue fiddling, so this is actually, as a strategy, a sight worse than cutting off one’s nose to spite his face.

And so, after Pádraic gets in Colm’s face again, Colm actually does it. One of the neatest tricks of the movie is how McDonagh leads the viewer to identify more with Colm than with Pádraic early on. One feels: yeah, this is a rude severing of friendship on Colm’s part, but why can’t Pádraic just let the guy be? Some of Colm’s points are well taken. Colm’s probably better for Pádraic than Dominic, the exceedingly rude policeman’s son who makes Pádraic look like an urbane conversationalist, but sometimes these are the breaks, social-life wise. But once the fingers begin coming off, your jaw slackens and your eyes pop. Where’s this going to end?

Nobody does self-loathing like the Irish, and with this film, McDonagh is on much surer footing than he was when trying to tell America a thing or two with his film “ Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri ” in 2017. “Banshees” has got touches of tenderness that are sometimes ever-so-slightly confounding, as when Colm shows care for Pádraic after the latter gets a pasting from Dominic’s bastard cop father. Being the writer he is, he often counters those with bracing reality checks. And as a director, he orchestrates the give-and-take between Farrell and Gleeson with the mastery of someone who appreciates these performers as much as discerning audiences do. They let it fly; Farrell does some of his best acting with his furrowed eyebrows; Gleeson has a glare that’s both a death-ray and an enigma. The pauses these guys enact are at times even funnier than the verbal comebacks McDonagh has come up with for them. And as it happens, Barry Keoghan as Dominic almost steals the movie out from under the leads, his very funny vulgar brashness never quite camouflaging his character’s poignant vulnerability. Very good show all around.

This review was filed from the world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 5th. It opens only in theaters on October 21st. 

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Rated R for language throughout, some violent content and brief graphic nudity.

109 minutes

Colin Farrell as Pádraic

Brendan Gleeson as Colm

Kerry Condon as Siobhán

Barry Keoghan as Dominic

• Martin McDonagh

Cinematographer

• Mikkel E.G. Nielsen
• Carter Burwell

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‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ Review: Giving Your Friend the Finger

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play feuding frenemies in Martin McDonagh’s latest film, set on an Irish coast in 1923.

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By A.O. Scott

The island of Inisherin, a rustic windswept rock off the coast of Ireland, does not appear on any real-world maps, but its geography is unmistakable. Not only because the sweaters and the sheep, the pints of Guinness and the thatched roofs bespeak a carefully curated Irish authenticity, but also because what happens on this island locates it firmly in an imaginary region that might be called County McDonagh.

This is a place, governed by the playful and perverse sensibility of the dramatist and filmmaker Martin McDonagh, where the picturesque and the profane intermingle, where jaunty humor keeps company with gruesome violence. The boundaries of the realm extend from Spokane, Wash ., to the Belgian city of Bruges by way of Missouri and various actual and notional Irish spots. “The Banshees of Inisherin,” McDonagh’s new film, embellishes the cartography without necessarily breaking new ground. It’s a good place to start if you’re new to his work, and cozily — which is also to say horrifically — familiar if you’re already a fan.

Other McDonagh hallmarks include a breakneck, swaybacked plot, by turns hilarious and grim, painted over with a nearly invisible varnish of sentimentality. It’s not necessary to believe what you see — it may, indeed, not be possible — but you can nonetheless find yourself beguiled by the wayward sincerity of the characters and touched by the sparks of humanity their struggles cast off. And impressed by the craft of the actors and the crew (which here includes the cinematographer Ben Davis, the composer Carter Burwell and the costume designer Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh). Perhaps above all, you are apt to be tickled, sometimes to gales of laughter, by the spray of verbal wit that characterizes the McDonagh dialect.

It’s 1923, though modernity has dawdled a bit en route to Inisherin, where rural life proceeds at its immemorial pace. On the mainland, the Irish Civil War drags on; distant gunfire can sometimes be heard across the water. The islanders pay it very little mind, and don’t see any point to taking a side. The local constable (Gary Lydon), a dull, violent brute and the closest thing to a pure villain this movie possesses, is pleased to have been recruited to assist in an execution. He doesn’t know or care whether the National Army or the I.R.A. is responsible for the killing. He’s content to gawk and get paid.

“Banshees,” in any case, is concerned with an intensely local conflict, between Padraic (Colin Farrell), a sociable cow herder, and Colm (Brendan Gleeson), a melancholy fiddler. They have been drinking together nearly every afternoon at the local shebeen for as long as anyone can remember, until Colm abruptly and unilaterally declares an end to their friendship. “I just don’t like you no more,” he tells Padraic, who responds with wounded incredulity.

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The Banshees of Inisherin Reviews

...a low-key and often excessively deliberate endeavor that never quite becomes as engrossing or captivating as one might’ve anticipated...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 7, 2024

The comedy is a veil for deep, complex themes that give “The Banshees of Inisherin” humour and pathos. Among these are measured explorations on toxic masculinity, loneliness, and purpose.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 15, 2024

It’s a film that merrily embraces fairy tale elements, enveloping us in a grim fable where good and bad are murky concepts at best.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 3, 2024

Through the story of two friends, Martin McDonagh also tells a tale of an everyman who has to wrestle with the idea of being forgotten while continuing to dredge through life and grapple with innumerable absurdities that govern it.

Full Review | Jun 11, 2024

“The Banshees of Inisherin” does a superb job of empathizing with Padraic. He bears the burden of uncertainty and questioning his reality.

Full Review | Jun 8, 2024

There are no missteps here, and it is, without a doubt, the best movie of the year for my money.

Full Review | Feb 28, 2024

Raw and weird, it’s a mordant fable of friendship gone sour that will have you questioning your own mortality while simultaneously making you laugh until it makes you cry.

Full Review | Feb 13, 2024

Dominic is the most tragic character in an island of pure, untempered tragedy.

Full Review | Jan 29, 2024

The greatest tragedy of all is that one of the friends will sacrifice what made them special, only to become another banshee of Inisherin.

Full Review | Dec 29, 2023

A dark comedy, at times with a great dramatic component, that explores human relationships and interpersonal communication with a lot of charisma and in a highly entertaining way. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Dec 19, 2023

McDonagh finds the perfect moments to insert humor, but the film’s comedic turns often serve to underscore the scope of the tragedy.

Full Review | Oct 26, 2023

A fascinating examination of male loneliness and hurt feelings.

Full Review | Sep 13, 2023

McDonagh uses the conflict between Pádraic and Colm to serve as a metaphor for the Irish Civil War. Brother against brother. Friends against friends. Their friendship loses itself in the fables of Inisherin forever.

Full Review | Sep 8, 2023

Its heartbreak is as potent as its comedy, both intertwined with the rhythms of the dialogue.

Full Review | Sep 5, 2023

It's delightful to watch these two character actors go back and forth...These two actors [Colin Farrell & Brendan Gleeson] are at the top of their game.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Aug 10, 2023

Colin Farrell’s performances lifts this quirk and dark comedy from Martin McDonagh.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Aug 9, 2023

The Banshees of Inisherin, as the title implies, is about death, both literal and figurative, but it’s the sad demise of a friendship that forms the bedrock of this brilliant, often poignant, frequently funny Irish fable.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Strikingly funny and heartbreakingly honest, Martin McDonagh returns to form by telling the tale of a non-romantic breakup, the sadness of being dumped, and the tricky business of dumping someone.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 25, 2023

Martin McDonagh explores the painful part of human relationships by finding the comedy and gore contained within.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

The Banshees of Inisherin is brilliant beyond belief. Darkly Hilarious, emotional, & Richly layered with themes of fate, friendship, & death. Colin & Brendan were stunning! Martin McDonagh though might of just directed & wrote his best film of his career

‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ Review: Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson Reunite for a Darkly Comic, Devastating Feud Between Friends

Martin McDonagh returns to the mythic brute poetry of his theater work for a study of men undone both by loneliness and kinship — the result is his richest, most moving film.

By Guy Lodge

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For Pádraic, a simple but sensitive type, this snub reduces his social circle to a mere dot — perhaps a short line if you include amiable village idiot Dominic (Barry Keoghan, his gangly physique and charcoal-sketched features never put to more guileless use), which nobody really does. Orphaned and unmarried, Pádraic shares his parents’ scruffy old home with his beloved donkey Jenny and his older sister Siobhan (a revelatory Kerry Condon), a nurturing, bookish woman who has never really found her people on this desolate, unkind island. It’s a protective Siobhan who manages to tease out of Colm the reason for his abrupt termination of his and Pádraic’s friendship: he finds the younger man dull, has more or less run out of things to say to him, and would prefer the company of his fiddle and his devoted border collie.

Unsurprisingly reluctant to take such an explanation lying down, Pádraic decides he’s been a casualty of Colm’s escalating depression, and brightly resolves to claw his way back into his ex-friend’s affections. His charm offensive is halted, however, when Colm issues a macabre ultimatum that vaults a simple estrangement to the level of an eccentric two-man blood feud. What begins as a doleful, anecdotal narrative becomes something closer to mythic in its rage and resonance: McDonagh has long fixated on the most visceral, vengeful extremes of human behavior, but never has he formed something this sorely heartbroken from that fascination. 

There’s much talk here of “niceness,” which has never been this filmmaker’s default setting: Pádraic prides himself on it, while Colm, whose had a decade or so longer on the planet to tire of social niceties, has come to see it as an overrated virtue. McDonagh’s script has sympathy for both, while audiences may find themselves intriguingly split. There’s a kind of admirable, self-knowing integrity in Colm’s simple, increasingly obsessive desire to be alone; Pádraic’s terror of being left alone himself, especially as Siobhan wistfully eyes a life beyond the island, is just as understandable. Condon, wry and warm but no twinkly, benevolent cypher, makes Siobhan the one character who can credibly empathize with both men. She gets one exquisite scene, too, with the wonderful Keoghan’s sweetly wounded Dominic, rebuffing a clumsy advance with an unimpeachable gentleness that’s in short supply on this island.

After a teasingly postcard-bright intro — which sets up an Emerald Isle ideal of verdant fields, rainbows and sunlight skittering across the ocean, soon to be bluntly shattered — McDonagh crafts an Ireland where despair, for everyone, is something to be managed rather than beaten. Ben Davis’s lensing washes even the characters’ best days in raincloud grays; Mark Tildesley’s production design trades in cramped, muddy spaces shorn of ornamental detail. 

It makes for a story world seemingly drained of tenderness, in which every character is either single, widowed or otherwise alone; Pádraic and Colm’s now-bloodied friendship was perhaps the purest thing in it. As Colm insists to the priest that he’s never had “impure thoughts about men,” it’s tempting to consider a queer undertow to the bond that was, though the truth is that the two warring men never seem much like soulmates — simply the next best thing on a isle short of souls. It’s the loss even of such modest mercies that makes McDonagh’s quietly magnificent film so caustically, hauntingly and sometimes raucously sad.

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Competition), Sept. 5, 2022. Running time: 114 MIN.

• Production: (Ireland-U.K.-U.S.) A Searchlight Pictures presentation in association with Film4, TSG Entertainment of a Blueprint Pictures production. Producers: Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, Martin McDonagh. Executive producers: Diarmuid McKeown, Ben Knight, Daniel Battsek, Ollie Madden. Co-producers: Jo Homewood, James Flynn, Morgan O'Sullivan.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Martin McDonagh. Camera: Ben Davis. Editor: Mikkel E.G. Nielsen. Music: Carter Burwell.
• With: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, Pat Shortt, Gary Lydon, David Pearse, Sheila Flitton.

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

The Banshees of Inisherin

Two lifelong friends find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship, with alarming consequences for both of them. Two lifelong friends find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship, with alarming consequences for both of them. Two lifelong friends find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship, with alarming consequences for both of them.

• Martin McDonagh
• Colin Farrell
• Brendan Gleeson
• Kerry Condon
• 1.1K User reviews
• 355 Critic reviews
• 87 Metascore
• 146 wins & 362 nominations total

Top cast 20

• Pádraic Súilleabháin

• Colm Doherty

• Siobhán Súilleabháin

• Jonjo Devine
• Peadar Kearney

• Dominic Kearney
• Mrs. McCormick
• Older Musician 1
• Older Musician 2
• Female Singer
• (as Lasairfhíona Ní Chonaola)

• Mrs. O'Riordan

• Student Musician 1
• Student Musician 2
• Student Musician 3
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Colin Farrell Reunites With Brendan Gleeson

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Did you know

• Trivia All of the main characters' sweaters were made by the same elderly woman, Delia Barry. She knitted them by hand specifically for the film, including doubles for each sweater. She was not present on set, and did not meet the actors prior to creating the pieces for them. Barry stated one of Colin Farrell's sweaters took 100 hours to complete.
• Goofs In the first scene in Colm's cottage, an old phonograph with a horn is seen, and heard playing a record. The record is spinning at 33 1/3 RPM, instead of 78 RPM, which was the ONLY speed used to play records in the early 1920's. The slower speed was not used until LP records were introduced in the late 1940s.

Priest : Do you think God gives a damn about miniature donkeys, Colm?

Colm Doherty : I fear he doesn't. And I fear that's where it's all gone wrong.

• Connections Featured in CBC News: Toronto: Episode dated 16 September 2022 (2022)
• Soundtracks The Banshees of Inisherin Written and Performed by Brendan Gleeson Performances also include Conor Connolly , James Carty , and Ryan Owens

User reviews 1.1K

• Oct 13, 2022
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• November 4, 2022 (United States)
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Official site
• Official site (United Kingdom)
• Los espíritus de la isla
• Inishmore, Aran Islands, County Galway, Ireland
• Searchlight Pictures
• Blueprint Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $10,582,266
• Oct 23, 2022
• $49,262,687

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 54 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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The Banshees of Inisherin review: A friendship turns into a feud overnight

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are best friends suddenly on the outs in Martin McDonagh's brilliant, serrated black comedy.

It's been nearly 15 years since Martin McDonagh made his feature directorial debut with In Bruges , a neat, nasty little gem of a movie about two bungling hitmen ( Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson ) on the lam — and not doing it well — in Belgium. The Banshees of Inisherin reunites him with his two leading men in a film that turns out to be pretty much the furthest thing from a sequel to Bruges , but still feels like a kind of homecoming nonetheless. And a testament, too, to how they've each evolved as artists: A prolific playwright whose last screen outing, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, won Oscars for both Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell, McDonagh has always been known for his particular brand of bleak existential comedy. Tar-black, bloody, and tinged with the surreal, it can also come off as ruthless, even casually cruel. Inisherin , though, feels like his most humane and deeply felt offering to date — which says a lot about a movie rife with blasphemy, self-mutilation, and miniature donkeys — and the actors here respond accordingly with some of the richest, most fully realized performances of their careers.

It's 1923 on a small windblown island off the coast of Ireland, and Pádraic (Farrell) seems like a happy-enough creature of habit: He lives in a modest cottage with his wry, bookish sister, Siobhán ( Better Call Saul 's Kerry Condon), tends to a small stable of animals, and meets his best mate Colm (Gleeson) regularly for pints at the local pub. That is, until the day Colm announces that he no longer wants to get pints, ever again. Life is too short, and Pádraic is too dull; Colm would prefer to be left alone with his dog and his fiddle, and maybe write a piece of music that actually means something before he dies. This abrupt change of heart isn't just bewildering for Pádraic, it's entirely destabilizing. Who is he, if not the man who gets pints with Colm?

Banshees , with its Kelly-green vistas, warbled shanties, and blithe obscenities ("feck" is a noun, an adjective, and sometimes a verb),could easily come off as the kind of Irish burlesque we've seen many times before; instead, the movie turns out to invert cliché as much as it embraces it. Inisherin may not be a hotbed for making new friends, but it's still a place rife with outsize characters: the local "idjit," Dominic ( Dunkirk 's puckish Barry Keoghan ) and his abusive constable father (Gary Lydon); the blustery parish priest (David Pearse); an elderly neighbor so wizened and witchy she looks like she might have once shared a staff with Gandalf. Their dialogue unfurls in Mcdonagh's signature rhythms, a sort of profane poetry that skitters between farce and calamity, often within the same sentence.

The cast tasked with it is masterful, from Keoghan's holy fool to Condon's long-suffering Siobhán, a nervy, sharp-witted woman stranded in a sea of petty grievances and grown adolescents. Farrell — alternately bruised, defiant, achingly sincere, and also very funny — wears the sum of his years here with fresh significance; he's still almost obscenely handsome, but there's a depth of feeling that could only come from lived experience, and a tender, shaggy gravitas in Gleeson too. Their falling out, of course, is not just about pints, or Pádraic's little house donkey that he keeps by his side like a border collie. To be corny, which the film (due in theaters Oct. 21) is decidedly not, it's about life: the brevity of it, the risks we do or don't take, who we choose to share it with in the end. And for all the gall, absurdity, and outright threats of physical violence, it's pretty feckin' wonderful. Grade: A–

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The Banshees of Inisherin Review

Friend vs fiddle..

The Banshees of Inisherin releases in theaters on Oct. 21, 2022.

Gunfire and cannons of the Irish Civil War rage on the west coast of Ireland in The Banshees of Inisherin. Still, that conflict remains on the periphery of Martin McDonagh’s follow-up to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri . The writer-director focuses our attention on another civil war, more personal and increasingly psychological, brewing between two long-time best friends Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) and Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) on the fictional island of Inisherin in 1923. It’s the type of isolated isle where homesteads are sparse but beautiful vistas are plenty, which cinematographer Ben Davies introduces elegantly in the opening scenes. Wide shots take in the naturally gorgeous greens, blues, and browns of this coastal community, setting a lovely backdrop for this darkly funny and dramatic tale of friendship.

On Inisherin everybody knows each other, everybody knows your business, and the routine of intensely local life keeps everyone ticking along until the clock strikes death. At 2 pm everyday, Pádraic eagerly, earnestly, knocks for Colm and the two head to the pub for a pint or five of the black stuff. When Colm one day chooses to coldly ignore his call, Pádraic’s circle are bemused by the slight, from his sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon) to JonJo the pub landlord (Pat Shortt). It’s in these early interactions that McDonagh cements the small-town humor; the quickly delivered back and forths earn several cackles. It provides a grounded yet gossipy tension that builds with biting force as the ambiguity of the rebuff becomes ever more explicit.

Pádraic’s amiability and good nature are intrinsic but slowly warped by this one-sided breakup. Farrell demonstrates this simple man’s torment with a brow so frequently furrowed that the pain of Colm’s rejection for being “dull” is almost too uncomfortable to take in – especially as his unwillingness to accept the snub leads to ever more dire and spiteful consequences. There’s something rather remarkable about Farrell’s thick eyebrows that they take you on as much of an emotional journey as the rest of the actor’s body does. It’s when this despairing look is framed in a window, looking in or out at his former best friend, that the increasing distance between the two men is ever more calcified.

Farrell plays Pádraic as an open book while Gleeson’s Colm is almost impenetrable. He’s such an enigmatic presence in the village that both the kindest and the cruelest want to be his drinking buddy yet he rarely gives anything away thanks to the hard face that accompanies him at nearly every moment. Colm’s cold silence might be exasperating to watch as Farrell’s puppy dog Pádraic seeks answers and acknowledgement but Gleeson’s steely delivery of McDonagh’s dialogue causes blunt force trauma to the soul.

What's the best Colin Farrell movie?

Condon’s exasperated Siobhan is a welcome respite to the masculine folly at play. The main thrust of the film might center on Pádraic (mostly) and Colm but her relatable affection for and frustration with the prideful men she’s surrounded by – as well as Inisherin’s limited opportunities for an intelligent woman such as herself – is a subplot that warranted more attention. Barry Keoghan, meanwhile, reinforces his penchant for creepy characters in Dominic, yet there’s far more to his doltish son of the island’s brutish police officer. Underneath the slurry enunciation and awkward candor, Keoghan tenderly reveals a man in as much, if not more, pain than his compatriots.

The film’s title shares its name with the musical piece Colm is determined to compose for the sake of his legacy and Gleeson's nifty fiddling skills are put to strong use. The folksy element of Carter Burwell's plucky score has its own sense of humor. Then there are the atmospheric choral voices bolstering a cloud of ominous melancholy over proceedings as well as a pagan undercurrent contrasting with the Catholic imagery and hypocrisy, personified mostly by Sheila Flitton’s flinty widow Mrs. McCormick. The Banshees of Inisherin is a welcome reunion of McDonagh with Farrell and Gleeson; all three are in sharp form in a blackly funny harangue of masculinity, legacy, and humanity.

Colin Farrell plumbs emotional and comedic depths in Martin McDonagh’s witty and wistful period drama, with Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan on solid supporting duty. Set against the stunning vistas of Ireland, The Banshees of Inisherin tells an effective and corrosive tale of friendship.

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Writer and director Martin McDonagh reunited with "In Bruges" stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in his new drama-comedy, "The Banshees of Inisherin."

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The Banshees of Inisherin is 2022’s funniest, darkest comedy

This In Bruges reunion feels like staring into an abyss reflected in a funhouse mirror

by Siddhant Adlakha

The Banshees of Inisherin is a return to familiar territory for writer-director Martin McDonagh: It plays like a spiritual sequel to his pitch-black 2008 comedy-thriller In Bruges . That film, McDonagh’s feature debut, stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as hitmen hiding out in a version of Bruges designed to feel like Catholic purgatory. Farrell and Gleeson also lead Banshees , another whip-smart, wryly amusing tale driven by existential dread. This time around, they play much simpler men — a farmer and a musician, respectively — but they have the same anguish as their assassin counterparts, resulting in a film that maintains a spiritual vice grip over its audience, in spite of the charming setting.

Eventually, McDonagh (most recently the writer-director of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri ) attempts to ground his abstract themes about mortality in the literal details of the story, causing the tension to dissipate. But the movie is such a rich, emotionally detailed text that not sticking the landing is only a minor mark against it.

Shot on the Irish islands of Inishmore and Achill — which stand in for the fictitious isle of Inisherin — the film feels both timeless and picturesque. Angelic choir notes score the opening scene, which follows Pádraic Súilleabháin (Farrell) on a routine stroll along Inisherin’s lush trails in the early 20th century. He’s checking in on his pal Colm Doherty (Gleeson) to invite him to the local pub for a pint, per their usual routine. But the quaint vision of paradise doesn’t last. Without spending even a moment on their backstory, McDonagh paints a vivid portrait of a friendship that has inexplicably crumbled, since Colm has decided — seemingly overnight — that he wants absolutely nothing to do with Pádraic, and he isn’t afraid to be blunt about it.

Pádraic, bewildered by Colm’s sudden rebuffs, can’t help but follow up and keep checking in with him, despite everyone’s advice to the contrary. This is where things take a macabre turn. To keep Pádraic away for good, Colm threatens to cut off one finger from his own fiddle hand every time Pádraic tries to speak with him.

Every scene is staged with an eye toward emotional repression, and an ear toward rhythmic dialogue and its subtext about death and what lies beyond — the exact same driving forces that made In Bruges so captivating. McDonagh keeps a keen focus on Farrell’s bemused attempts to put two and two together. His journey from denial to realization engenders sympathy, as he tries to make sense of a relationship thrown into sudden disarray, and deals with the lurking possibility that closure may forever remain out of reach. Each desperate attempt to find answers is just as much about discerning Colm’s motives as it is about Pádraic sussing out potential truths about himself. Who among us has not wondered what we’ve done so wrong that has made us so deserving of someone else’s ire?

But even once these cards seem to be laid on the table, Farrell’s construction of Pádraic continues to work in tandem with McDonagh’s winding text. Colm, a self-professed artist, would rather spend time writing music instead of making idle conversation, though it takes a while for him to get around to expressing his real reasoning. In the meantime, Farrell’s performance reflects shades of the potential accusations and implications of Colm’s cold shoulder. Is Colm too much of an intellectual for Pádraic? Is Pádraic too naive? Was there some drunken insult or slight he doesn’t fully remember?

Whatever the case, Farrell’s quiet moments paint Pádraic as an easily amused man who maintains a touching friendship with his farm animals. But Farrell truly shines in the way he deepens even Pádraic’s most seemingly one-note traits. He layers each idiosyncrasy with a recognizable innocence as Pádraic begins to introspect. His conversational drive is polite and superficial, but it’s bolstered by a seeming inability to string together the right words, or connect the dots between two successive thoughts or emotions, even when they’re full and rich. He’s always searching, more than the average person should. Then again, despite Colm’s more put-together facade, he’s always searching too. (Frequently at confession at the local church, where he’s too dismissive of his gossipy priest to find real enlightenment or self-reflection.)

Pádraic’s heartbreaking quest for answers is an uphill battle, especially when he begins to interrogate the movie’s rich tapestry of side characters — Pádraic’s educated sister Siobhán (a measured Kerry Condon), town simpleton Dominic ( Killing of a Sacred Deer ’s Barry Keoghan, throwing his hat in the ring as a modern Peter Lorre), and other pub-goers, who ride a fine line between unconfrontational and nosy. All of them seem to get along with Colm just fine, which leaves Pádraic adrift, wondering whether he really is to blame for the fallout. It’s hard not to be convinced by Gleeson’s quietly menacing delivery, with harsh whispers that turn even desperate pleas for isolation into adversarial threats.

Both men withhold with their emotions, but Farrell and Gleeson are such generous performers that their real-life friendship infects each frame. It makes the characters’ subdued affinity for each other feel all the more tragic once the friend-breakup is set in motion. This is especially evident during evenings at the pub, where the camera catches hesitant glances between them, as Colm plays music and Pádraic drinks away his sorrows. Those glimpses imbue the film with a borderline romantic warmth, which cinematographer Ben Davis paints with the dim flickers of candle- and lamplight.

Meanwhile, the seemingly timeless setting turns out to be very specific indeed. Explosions on the mainland, off in the distance, reveal the movie’s historical backdrop: the Irish Civil War in the early 1920s. The actual violence never touches Inisherin’s shores, and there’s certainly a case to be made that the film’s tale of brother turning against brother is a metaphor for the conflict, albeit a flimsy one. However, the encroaching doom and gloom places the characters’ mortality front and center. Colm doesn’t come right out and say it, but his sudden desire to create and to be remembered, like his idol Mozart, feels directly informed by the looming specter of death. (Or in the Irish folklore the film lightly touches on, the banshee.) And Colm is weighed down by a self-sabotaging streak that’s amusing but disturbing, given his threat to maim himself.

Both men are forced to reflect on themselves, and on what they bring to those around them — one through larger political events, and the other through personal grievance. The more these reflections yield wildly opposing results, the more Pádraic and Colm’s encounters become a breeding ground for festering tensions about how to move through the modern world when all seems lost. Colm wants to create. Pádraic simply wants to exist. In the face of death and loneliness, perhaps neither of these choices is better than the other.

McDonagh funnels all these philosophical musings through his stage sensibility, and his penchant for the ebb and flow of words. He often captures these verbal and emotional rhythms by racking focus between characters, rather than cutting between them, as if the film’s visual aesthetic were its own enrapturing melody. The actual music swings in the opposite direction, with Carter Burwell adding a sense of mischief and mystery through strings plucked a little too aggressively, as if Colm is weaving the film’s aural fabric while trying to fend off Pádraic’s advances.

The film uses humorous repetition to deal with its mournful weight, and to hammer home the sheer strangeness of its premise, resulting in one of the most darkly funny films of 2022. But McDonagh can’t quite find the right way to string all his heavy themes together once he enters its final act. As the story unfolds, the absurdist playwright in McDonagh comes rushing to the fore in a way it hasn’t in any of his films since In Bruges . Banshees maintains shades of the dark humor he brought to his 2001 stage play The Lieutenant of Inishmore , which, while set in the early ’90s, also unfolds against the backdrop of sectarian Irish conflict, and similarly features an animal-loving protagonist named Pádraic. The problem, however, arises when McDonagh tries to graft the play’s Pádraic, and his violent emotional trajectory, onto his more restrained movie counterpart, when the two have little in common but their name.

As McDonagh tries to put words to his ethereal themes of mortality and remembrance in The Banshees of Inisherin , it winds up reading like an attempt to ground intangible spiritual dilemmas in concrete reasoning and definitive emotional paths. That mostly comes via a last-minute coincidence that feels largely disconnected from its characters. All of which makes the story more didactic and moralizing than the first two acts suggest it’s going to be.

Still, it’s surprisingly appropriate that the film should lose its way while trying to express the inexpressible, and trying to put words to emotions that Colm struggles to express. It’s hard to know how to talk about the lingering fear of how we’ll be remembered by the future once we’ve become the past. And until it strays off course, it remains a nuanced expression of this idea in the present, causing its characters to curdle and contort as they begin to believe they’re running out of time.

No one in this film is a wholly good person. Practically everyone is mean or irreverent in some way. What makes it such a riveting watch is their constant search for some semblance of goodness, understanding, or sense in a place and moment where little of those things exist. With its striking tonal balance, rich performances, and layered introspections, The Banshees of Inisherin represents McDonagh at his optimum, creating a complex work that captures the strange spectrum of human emotions experienced at death’s front door.

The Banshees of Inisherin opens in theaters in limited release on Oct. 21, with a national rollout to follow over the next few weeks.

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‘The Banshees of Inisherin’: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson Turn a Buddy Tragedy Into a Masterpiece

By David Fear

“I just don’t like ya no more.”

Then, one day, Pádraic leaves the modest house he shares with his sister, Siobhan (Kerry Condon), and his cow herd, and Jenny the miniature pet donkey, and goes to fetch his drinking companion. There’s no answer to his knock. He spies Colm through the window, sitting alone, smoking. Confused, the man ambles down to the tavern by himself. “Have you been rowin’?” asks the bartender. “I don’t think we’ve been rowin’,” Pádraic replies. When he finally catches up to Colm at the bar, his pal tells him to sit somewhere else. What’s going on, the younger man wants to know. And then Colm says the seven words that will cost these two gents a lot more than just their friendship.

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McDonagh also wants to give his actors a hell of a showcase, too, and it’s the two stars butting brows at the center of The Banshees of Inisherin that make this a masterpiece of men behaving very feckin’ badly. We don’t want to ignore the great work that Keoghan or Condon are doing on the periphery, or the exquisite cinematography by Ben Davis, or Carter Burwell’s ability to channel both regional folk music and a universal sense of grief in his score. It’s just that the Farrell-Gleeson Blues Explosion is what grounds McDonagh’s heady notions and fuels its fire.

There’s such an incredible give and take between these two, and while we’ve been taking Gleeson’s off-kilter charisma for granted since 1998’s The General, the performance that leaves scars is Farrell’s. It’s tough to think of a portrayal that finds so many emotional shades and levels of depth in incomprehension; his Pádraic can’t grasp the logic behind his friend’s decision any more than he can control his reactions, his sudden neediness or the shame that he’s done something wrong by doing nothing much with his life. You also see why a friend might be tempted to back away from him as well, yet you never feel that Farrell is tipping his hand toward sympathy or antipathy for this remarkably simple soul. It’s not a coincidence that the two men give the film’s ending a sense of ambiguity regarding what might happen after the credits role. Yet it’s also not a mistake that Farrrell is the one who gets the final shot, and that he’s the fella who leaves you with the sense that you’ve just witnessed wounds that may never heal. May the Banshees shriek for this duo forever. As for McDonagh: Welcome back.

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Review: In buddy breakup drama ‘The Banshees of Inisherin,’ all’s Farrell in love and war

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It’s hardly an original insight to note that “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Martin McDonagh’s caustic and mournful new movie, is also his latest work to give its location top billing. Longtime admirers of this British-Irish writer-director’s stage work know his fondness for regionally specific titles like “The Cripple of Inishmaan” and “The Lieutenant of Inishmore,” two plays that — together with this film — form a loosely connected trilogy, tied together not by common characters but by common ground. If character is destiny in McDonagh’s work, then both are also inextricably tied to location and landscape. Here, as before, he draws us into an insular Irish enclave, where the air is thick with salty insults and bitter laughs, and cruelty seems to well up from the soil like highly acidic groundwater.

Which is not to suggest that Ireland — either the country of McDonagh’s firsthand experience or the one of his fictional imagination — has a monopoly on cruelty. That much is clear from his farther-flung plays, like “A Behanding in Spokane,” and also from his movies such as “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and “In Bruges.” That 2008 comedy’s co-leads, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, are superbly reunited in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” only this time, rather than playing two hit men on a less-than-idyllic Belgian holiday, they’re playing longtime best friends who have never known any home beyond Inisherin. And from our first glimpse of this small, fictional island, with its lush greenery and not-infrequent rainbows (beautifully filmed by Ben Davis), that might not seem like such a bad state of affairs.

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By movie’s end, we know better. The year is 1923, and in the distance the Irish civil war is raging, providing some blunt yet hazy thematic scaffolding for this more intimate tale of men in conflict. The beauty of Inisherin will soon turn sour and corrosive, much like the once-harmonious friendship between Pádraic Súilleabháin (Farrell), a sweet-souled dairy farmer, and Colm Doherty (Gleeson), a gruff, gimlet-eyed fiddle player. In the opening scene, Pádraic sets out to meet Colm for their usual afternoon pint, only to find the man sitting at home, his back to the window, quietly ignoring Pádraic’s knocks and entreaties. Can a man scowl not just with his face but with his entire hulking frame? Somehow, Gleeson manages.

Bewildered by this silent treatment, Pádraic remains unperturbed — surely it must be some sort of joke or misunderstanding — and refuses to accept that the friendship is over, even after Colm later spells it out for him down at the pub: “I just don’t like ya no more.” After a pause that lasts a small eternity, Pádraic responds, with a mix of confusion, disbelief and heartache that Farrell plays to perfection: “Ya do like me!” And the funny thing is, he’s right. Colm’s abrupt decision stems not from a lack of affection but a lack of time: Gripped by despair and newly aware of his encroaching mortality, he wants to live out his days playing and composing music, the only thing that provides him with any semblance of comfort or meaning. He also wants to consume his last pints in peace, away from Pádraic’s incessant yammering.

Incessant yammering, of course, is one unflattering if essentially correct way to describe McDonagh’s own flavorsome dialogue, which uses staccato rhythms and purposeful word repetitions to generate a sustained back-and-forth almost as musical as Carter Burwell’s lovely score. Apart from “feck,” the favored expletive of this early 20th century Irish milieu, the script’s most frequently deployed four-letter words are “dull” and “nice,” two words that are often hurled in Pádraic’s direction. Agreeable and simple-minded, Pádraic gets along with just about everyone, from his sharp-as-a-tack sister, Siobhan (a flat-out wonderful Kerry Condon), to the animals placed in his reliable care. (None of the latter is more beloved than his miniature donkey, Jenny, the most important member of the movie’s splendid four-legged ensemble.)

Colm’s rejection of Pádraic is also, in its way, a rejection of the tyranny of niceness, and an assertion that greatness — whether in the form of a Mozart symphony or, God willing, the humbler violin piece he’s trying to compose — is of far greater value. All of which opens up a rich, thorny dialogue concerning McDonagh himself, who likes to blur the lines between humanism and nihilism, and who in “The Banshees of Inisherin” comes perhaps as close to greatness as he’s ever gotten. One measure of the movie’s skill, and its generosity, is that it embraces the wisdom of both its protagonists. You’ll share Colm’s exasperation and defend his right to pursue an unimpeded life of music and the mind, but you’ll also concede Pádraic’s point that kindness and camaraderie leave behind their own indelible if often invisible legacies.

Muddying the waters still further: Colm, despite his strict enforcement of boundaries (including a not-so-idle threat to harm himself if Pádraic doesn’t leave him alone), nonetheless finds ways to treat his hapless former friend with decency and compassion. Meanwhile, Pádraic, for all his talk of niceness, is the one whose escalating harassment of Colm takes on menacing overtones, lubricated by whiskey, desperation and anger. To watch these two characters rage against each other is to acquire an entirely new understanding of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. And no one ultimately understands that dynamic better than Siobhan, who — as both Pádraic’s loyal, loving sister and the one person on Inisherin who can keep intellectual pace with Colm — could hardly be more divided in her sympathies.

Siobhan’s presence — and her own fiercely individual decisionmaking — opens up another dialectic. Although centered on the conflict between two equally unyielding men, the movie is no less about the tension between a small, isolated community and the vast world that lies beyond its overcast horizon. Mocked by the provincial townfolk for being single and bookish, Siobhan is eyeing her own possible escape. And who can blame her? “The Banshees of Inisherin,” like much of McDonagh’s earlier work, uses its physically remote setting to map out an entire human cosmos of greed, spite and self-delusion, populated by characters including a gossipy shopkeeper (Bríd Ní Neachtain), a physically abusive policeman (Gary Lydon), a witchy prophesier of doom (Sheila Flitton) and, on the more likable side, a village idiot named Dominic (Barry Keoghan).

Colin Farrell doesn’t have many ‘true friends.’ But Brendan Gleeson is one

From ‘In Bruges’ to ‘Saturday Night Live,’ the ‘Banshees of Inisherin’ co-stars have never had a problem picking up where they left off.

Oct. 19, 2022

With the exception of Dominic, a perpetual troublemaker whom Keoghan invests with wit, mischief and unexpected pathos, none of these peripheral characters reveals more than one or two dimensions. If “The Banshees of Inisherin” marks a significant improvement on the wildly uneven “Three Billboards,” it still doesn’t entirely shake off some of the reflexively glib, cynical aspects of McDonagh’s writing, namely his tendency to reduce some of his characters to one-note personalities, or to make them the butt of cruel comic (and sometimes cosmic) punchlines. They are the playthings of a God who dispenses punishments with a whimsical, even arbitrary hand, and whom few of these habitual churchgoers — maybe not even the meddlesome priest (David Pearse) who’s enlisted to mediate the central conflict — ultimately really trusts or believes in.

And so Colm is only right to be consumed with despair. Which doesn’t make Pádraic wrong to assume that there are salves for life’s woes, and that he might, in fact, be one of them. Farrell’s performance, one of the finest he’s ever given, is a balm in itself, a thing of rough-hewn simplicity and exquisite delicacy, nailing comic beats and striking emotional chords with the same deft touch. Without ever turning leaden or oppressive, he shows us a man who isn’t the same by movie’s end, who’s experienced more loss, fury and grief than he’d ever thought possible. All he can count on anymore, really, is the ground beneath his feet — and in that respect at least, McDonagh suggests, he may be far less alone than he realizes.

‘The Banshees of Inisherin’

Rated: R, for language throughout, some violent content and brief graphic nudity Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes Playing: Starts Oct. 21 at AMC the Grove, Los Angeles; AMC Century City

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The Banshees Of Inisherin Review

21 Oct 2022

The Banshees Of Inisherin

How do you break up with a best friend? It’s a good question, tackled brilliantly by Seinfeld way back in its first season. After all, the rules of social disengagement are pretty clear when it comes to sexual relationships, even more so when they involve divorce. But separating from a buddy you just don’t like anymore? When the pair of you live on a small, scantily populated island with only one pub? How do you go about that?

In Martin McDonagh ’s world, the answer is: brutally. After resolving to dissolve his friendship with the dependable but dull Pádraic ( Colin Farrell ), Colm ( Brendan Gleeson ) bluntly tells his ex-friend he doesn’t want talk to him or drink with him ever again. No explanation given. No attempt made to soften the blow. Of course, if you’re familiar with writer-director McDonagh’s previous film work, from In Bruges to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri , such tactlessness should come as no surprise — McDonagh’s scripts are so abrasive, you could use them as sandpaper. So the focus of the film is less on Colm’s decision, and more on Pádraic’s reaction, not to mention the impact it has on his “limited” (another character’s word, not ours) life.

Farrell is fantastic, delivering one of his best-ever performances.

Ironically, for a story about a friendship-wreck, The Banshees Of Inisherin is also a reunion: of McDonagh with the double act that made the hitman antics of In Bruges such a piquant treat. However, Farrell and Gleeson don’t spend nearly as much time on screen together here, for self-evident reasons. It’s a shame, in a small way, but it does add to the pervading sense of wrongness.

Colm is largely inscrutable, despite the occasional revelation of sorts, and the odd flash of kindliness. McDonagh never fully reveals what drives him to the Pádraic-alienating extremes he goes to later in the film, and that makes him the more emotionally distant of the two men.

This is primarily Pádraic’s story; the tale of a good, decent fella who, through an enforced process of self-examination, finds and embraces other, sharper facets to his personality. Farrell is fantastic in the role, delivering one of his best-ever performances. He takes on a kind of sagging anti-charisma, a seeming guilelessness which he initially plays for laughs, but then gradually and convincingly brews into something much darker.

Complementing him perfectly is Kerry Condon as Pádraic’s savvy sister, Siobhan. Her exasperation at her brother’s response to Colm’s ultra-dick move is thoroughly relatable, and you’ll welcome every moment she spends on screen. Siobhan also evokes the most sympathy as a woman who has clearly, desperately outgrown this cliff- edged, wall-scarred speck of an island — a realisation only underlined by the clumsy amorous attentions of Barry Keoghan’s damaged youth, Dominic, a character that sadly gets the shortest narrative shrift of the bunch.

The drama may be intimate, but the backdrop feels epic.

Tenderly scored by Carter Burwell and gorgeously shot by cinematographer Ben Davis — the drama may be intimate, but the backdrop feels epic — The Banshees Of Inisherin is a film whose unhurried pace never drags. It is, we suppose, McDonagh’s gentlest offering yet (and the fact that his gentlest film involves acts of mutilation says a lot about his other work). That said, you could also argue it is his first war movie. And not just because it is set during the Irish Civil War of 1922-23, which is heard raging just a few miles across the water. After all, Colm and Pádraic’s split is really just that war in microcosm. The causes are obscure and confusing, the emerging conflict escalates fast, the previously close participants employ tactics that would have once been unthinkable. And the after-effects will be felt for years to come.

McDonagh has never been one for neat resolutions, so it’s not giving anything away to say that we’re denied one here, too. This is no bromantic-comedy, and you really shouldn’t be hoping for any feel-good vibes (though there are plenty of laughs, if your humour verges on the dark side). But the film is engrossing and beautifully mounted, and is sure to not disappoint anyone who’s enjoyed McDonagh’s previous rough rides.

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'The Banshees of Inisherin' review: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson bring friendly fire to dark comedy

Most folks can relate to the emotional doom spiral of a romantic interest suddenly ghosting them out of nowhere. But there’s nothing worse than the thought of a trusted best friend telling you to take a hike and wanting to cut off all contact.

Writer/director Martin McDonagh ’s dazzling dark comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin” (★★★½ out of four; rated R; in theaters and streaming on HBO Max) takes this universal conceit, set on a remote Irish island in 1923, to hilarious and extraordinarily bleak places. The “In Bruges” duo of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson reteam to give understandable humanity to two friends with a permanent wedge between them. And Farrell, especially, offers one of his most nuanced performances as a nice guy driven to extremes because of forced loneliness.

Happy-go-lucky Pádraic (Farrell) goes about his day like any other on the fictional isle of Inisherin – caring for his miniature donkey and other animals, bantering with his sister Siobhán (a scrappy Kerry Condon) and heading to the local pub for a midafternoon pint with his buddy, Colm (Gleeson). Colm, an older man, tells him to sit somewhere else, and eventually takes his drink outside. Pádraic wants to know what’s up with the rebuff, and he’s not excited by Colm’s answer: “I just don’t like you anymore.”

'Banshees of Inisherin': Why broken friendships hit home for stars Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson

Colm explains that he no longer has time for Pádraic’s “aimless chatting” and just wants his former BFF to leave him alone so he can play his fiddle and live his life in peace and quiet. Spurred on by this suddenly fractured friendship – and the fact that everyone’s thrown, including Siobhán and Dominic (the delightfully excitable  Barry Keoghan ), the locale's capricious voice of reason – Pádraic keeps bugging Colm to find out what he can do to fix things. This bothers Colm even more, to the point where he threatens to start cutting off his fingers if Pádraic won’t leave him alone. Both men are on the stubborn side, and take this feud to unfortunate, violent lengths.

McDonagh, who splendidly captured another community in turmoil with 2017's best-picture nominee “ Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri ,” insightfully sets “Banshees” during the Irish Civil War: Residents of Inisherin frequently see skirmishes occurring on the mainland, while a more intimate battle escalates around them. Even though they live on a glorious and expansive landscape, these people are all up in each other’s business constantly, so everybody has a stake in Pádraic and Colm’s uncivil row, from Dominic’s abusive cop dad (Gary Lydon) to a witchy elderly woman (Sheila Flitton) who may or may not be a banshee herself. (For those unfamiliar, a banshee is a female spirit in Irish folklore who foretells death.) 

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There is a certain heightened reality to the goings-on that belies how grounded the film is in its themes of isolation, desperation and mortality. Its characters pick sides, but the film doesn’t, and while it’s told mostly from Pádraic’s brokenhearted perspective, you clearly see each man’s point of view.

Pádraic is gobsmacked to lose his closest friend; Colm yearns to leave some sort of artistic legacy; and others, like Siobhán – who’s by far the smartest person on the island – are left to choose between picking up the pieces or looking out for themselves.

'The Banshees of Inisherin'): All the best movies we saw at Toronto Film Festival, ranked

Condon and Keoghan give “Banshees” extra personality and verve, while Farrell and Gleeson are the two halves of its beating heart. It’s hard to hate Colm because of the world-weary depth Gleeson lends him – plus, he has a ridiculously cute dog that plays a vital role in the film’s memorable endgame. And Farrell brings a lovable underdog nature to Pádraic that doesn’t let him off the hook for his questionable actions.

“Banshees” masterfully explores the complications of a platonic friendship – when old pals stop being polite and start getting real – with a sailor’s mouth and a mix of hilarity and tragedy in one wail of a tale. 

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The Banshees of Inisherin review: The best breakup film of the year

“The Banshees of Inisherin is not only the year’s greatest breakup film, but also an appropriately thorny follow-up to In Bruges, the acclaimed drama that first brought Gleeson, Farrell, and McDonagh together.”

• Martin McDonagh's unpredictable, emotionally involving script
• Colin Farell's career-best performance
• Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan, and Kerry Condon's stunning supporting performances
• Slightly too long
• A few too many tourist ad-esque shots of Ireland
• An ending that may be too ambiguous for some viewers

Early on in The Banshees of Inisherin , the brilliant new film from writer-director Martin McDonagh, Siobhán (Kerry Condon) asks her brother, Pádraic (Colin Farrell), a question that’s clearly been on her mind for a long time. “Do you ever get lonely, Pádraic?” she asks. “Do I ever get lonely? Do I ever get lonely ? What is with everyone today?” Pádraic responds shortly before storming out of the room. He, notably, doesn’t answer Siobhán’s question. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t know how to answer it. Or maybe it’s because the answer is obvious — so obvious, in fact, that there’s no point in even asking. Of course , Pádraic gets lonely. Who wouldn’t be on a small Irish island like Inisherin?

Breaking up is hard to do

A pair of terrific lead performances, a fully realized irish world.

For Pádraic, the inherent loneliness of his home has largely been kept at bay by one thing: his long-standing friendship with Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson), a talented violinist. Pádraic’s life is turned upside down, however, when Colm decides at the start of The Banshees of Inisherin that he no longer wants to be friends with Farrell’s oblivious, simple-minded farmer. The decision, which is born out of seemingly nothing more than Colm’s own dissatisfaction with his life, forces both he and Pádraic to face the parts of themselves and their lives that they’ve either never noticed or long chosen to ignore.

What emerges from these reckonings is not only the year’s greatest breakup film, but also an appropriately thorny follow-up to In Bruges , the acclaimed drama that first brought Gleeson, Farrell, and McDonagh together. Here, in his latest outing, McDonagh uses the disintegration of a single friendship to touch on everything from the Irish Civil War to the ways in which mental illness often affects not just one person, but those they love as well. Not since their previous collaboration have Gleeson, McDonagh, and Farrell dealt with such emotionally visceral, delicate material, but all three emerge from The Banshees of Inisherin more accomplished than they were before.

Set in the early 1920s, The Banshees of Inisherin takes place during a time when Ireland is still in the midst of its infamous civil war. Despite that fact, the only signs of war that ever seem to reach the residents of The Banshees of Inisherin ‘s central island are the occasional booms of canons and the thin pillars of smoke that can be seen from across the sea. While these traces of bloodshed linger ominously in the air as well, the violence of the war itself has, nonetheless, not yet come to the shores of the film’s eponymous island when The Banshees of Inisherin begins.

That all changes when Gleeson’s Colm decides to terminate his friendship with Farrell’s Pádraic. The latter, understandably, doesn’t take Colm’s decision well. However, when Pádraic repeatedly demands to hear a reasonable explanation for his friend’s change of attitude, Colm comes up with a brutal ultimatum: Every time Pádraic bothers Colm, he will cut off one of his own fingers. The only way for Pádraic to avoid bloodshed is, therefore, to totally cut himself off from Colm.

Like so many of McDonagh’s best dramatic inventions, Colm’s ultimatum pulses with the threat of both inward and outward violence. McDonagh, for his part, never outright explains the feelings and thoughts that led Gleeson’s Colm to such a bitter, violent mental space, either. The writer, instead, lets Colm’s actions speak for themselves, and his decision to threaten to harm himself instead of Farrell’s Padraic ultimately tells us everything we need to know about Colm’s personal issues.

Both Colm and Pádraic are, in many ways, sketched very thinly by McDonagh. In the hands of lesser performers, they might have even come across as one-note. While Gleeson and Farrell don’t, by any means, paint outside the lines of McDonagh’s original sketches, either, they do fill them up with enough color to turn both Colm and Pádraic into two of the most memorable characters you’ll likely see on-screen this year.

McDonagh’s familiarity with Gleeson and Farrell also allows him to play to each of their strengths. Gleeson’s ability to seem composed even in the face of absolute chaos has, for instance, helped him hone a uniquely commanding screen presence over the years. Here, however, Gleeson’s steadfast composure is used to devastating effect once it becomes clear that Colm’s assured, calm demeanor is nothing more than a thin veil meant to cover up his own sense of wayward hopelessness. Opposite him, Colin Farrell taps into the same kind of emotional volatility that McDonagh spotlighted when they worked together nearly 15 years ago on In Bruges .

In a sense, Farrell’s turn in The Banshees of Inisherin even feels like an inverse of his In Bruges performance. That 2008 drama saw Farrell play a character whose initial harshness and cruelty eventually fell away to reveal the depression and guilt that had been tormenting him all along. Here, in The Banshees of Inisherin , Pádraic’s innocence is gradually chipped away until all that remains is his own bitterness and anger. The character’s transformation is alternatively heartbreaking and horrifying to watch, and Farrell makes the most of it, turning in a performance that might very well be the best of his career so far.

Outside of Gleeson and Farrell, Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan turn in two stunning performances as The Banshees of Inisherin ‘s primary supporting figures. As Siobhán, Pádraic’s sister, Condon serves as the steady, sole voice of reason amid the growing chaos caused by Colm and her brother’s unnecessary feud. Keoghan, meanwhile, cements himself yet again as one of Hollywood’s most exciting young performers with his turn as Dominic, a town pariah whose brash personality has created a painful divide between him and many of Inisherin’s other residents.

Together, Keoghan, Condon, Farrell, and Gleeson breathe real life into The Banshees of Inisherin ’s isolated and humorous, if often melancholic, world. As a film about two friends who are suddenly and violently ripped apart by their own hang-ups, McDonagh’s latest is, much like the characters within it, a heart-wrenching, relentlessly honest piece of work. It’s not just Colm and Pádraic’s friendship that McDonagh has on his mind in The Banshees of Inisherin , though.

While Inisherin itself may seem to exist in its own little world, McDonagh makes it clear that the island isn’t free of the same problems that have plagued humanity for centuries. That point is never better made than in The Banshees of Inisherin ‘s third act when McDonagh briefly shows Farrell’s Pádraic watching silently as distant pillars of smoke billow up into the air. They look strikingly similar to the ones that Pádraic saw near the start of the film, but unlike those, which belonged to Ireland’s mainland, these new plumes of smoke are coming from the same space as a nearby Inisherin homestead. Violence, it turns out, has a way of leaving its marks on even the loneliest of places.

The Banshees of Inisherin hits theaters on Friday, October 14.

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The banshees of inisherin.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 11 Reviews
• Kids Say 4 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Dark Irish comedy has language, violence, drinking, smoking.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Banshees of Inisherin is a superb, dark Irish comedy-drama set in 1923, centered around a group of men who spend their days drinking and smoking in the local pub. It stars Colin Farrell as Pádraic and Brendan Gleeson as Colm, the latter abruptly deciding one day that he no longer…

Why Age 15+?

A character cuts off their fingers; the gaping wound, dripping with blood, and d

Characters say "feck," an Irish way of saying "f--k." Other words such as "shite

Characters spend much of their day in the pub, drinking. Toward the end of the e

A character is seen naked and asleep, but in the shadows so not much is seen. Re

Any Positive Content?

Pádraic is a sincere, earnest man. He thrives on being nice, and caring for othe

A breakdown of a friendship is the main theme. The detrimental effects that a li

Set mainly in a pub in a small Irish town; majority of customers are White men.

Violence & Scariness

A character cuts off their fingers; the gaping wound, dripping with blood, and discarded fingers are all shown. Characters are punched, including a police officer. A young character is seen with bruises after their parent beats them up. Suggestion that a child has been molested by their parent. A character's corpse is lifted out of the water after drowning. Full-blown arson attack. A donkey dies.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Characters say "feck," an Irish way of saying "f--k." Other words such as "shite," "bollocks," and "knob" are heard. Characters swear in the church, including the priest. A character is referred to as "ginger" and "fat," both intended as insults. Characters refer to others as being "dim."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters spend much of their day in the pub, drinking. Toward the end of the evening they tend to be rather drunk. Many characters smoke, too, one using a pipe.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A character is seen naked and asleep, but in the shadows so not much is seen. References later to masturbating, and a description of a penis. A character makes a romantic plea but is turned down.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Role Models

Pádraic is a sincere, earnest man. He thrives on being nice, and caring for others -- and wishes that more value was put upon this trait. The breakdown of his friendship with Colm leads him to feeling very low. Colm is a pensive man who is also perhaps depressed. His ending of his friendship with Pádraic is sudden and arguably harsh. Dominic only sees women as objects of desire. Siobhan, who is arguably the most positive character, realizes there is a way out and moves to the city for a new life.

Positive Messages

A breakdown of a friendship is the main theme. The detrimental effects that a limiting environment and a lack of prospects can have on its inhabitants.

Diverse Representations

Set mainly in a pub in a small Irish town; majority of customers are White men. The one key female character, however, appears to be the only one with any sense. A priest takes offence when they are called "gay." Depression is explored.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that The Banshees of Inisherin is a superb, dark Irish comedy-drama set in 1923, centered around a group of men who spend their days drinking and smoking in the local pub. It stars Colin Farrell as Pádraic and Brendan Gleeson as Colm, the latter abruptly deciding one day that he no longer wants to be friends with Pádraic. Depression amongst men is discussed, and the film has some dark, disturbing scenes. This includes a man cutting off his fingers. A corpse is seen being lifted out of some water, and a character commits arson in an attempted murder plot. One young man in the village is said to have been sexually abused by his father, the local police officer. That same man is also seen entirely naked. There are countless uses of the word "feck," along with "shite" and "bollocks." The characters drink consistently, and they smoke too. It's a majority White male cast, but it should be acknowledged that the one female character of note, Siobhan ( Kerry Condon ), is maybe the most sensible and positive person of the lot. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (11)
• Kids say (4)

Based on 11 parent reviews

Strange and grotesque Irish folk tale

What's the story.

Set in 1923 Ireland, THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN is the story of two friends who are no longer friends. Pádraic ( Colin Farrell ) is one day bemused to see his confidante and drinking buddy Colm ( Brendan Gleeson ) suddenly give him the cold shoulder. Desperate to know what's sparked this change of heart, Pádraic pushes for an answer, yet all he's actually doing is pushing Colm further away -- to a point nobody had expected.

Is It Any Good?

While hilarious at times, with real laugh-out-loud moments, the entire experience of this Irish comedy-drama is spiked by a dark undercurrent. The Banshees of Inisherin constantly surprises the viewer, leading us down some disturbing paths. All the while, a sadness exists, working in perfect harmony with the film's more surrealistic elements. The film reunites writer and director Martin McDonagh with his two leads from In Bruges , and the trio's talents once again shine. Both Farrell and Gleeson are in top form and comfortable in their surroundings.

Farrell in particular is so brilliant in the leading role, bringing such a sense of sincerity to the character that you want to befriend him. The film also shines tonally. To be this funny, and this dark, and not have either compromise the other is a true mark of a genius. With yet another hit of a film to add to his impressive collection, McDonagh is falling into that very category.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the themes of friendship and loneliness in The Banshees of Inisherin . How did Pádraic feel when Colm said he no longer wanted to be friends with him? Why do you think Colm said this?

How was drinking and smoking depicted in the film? Were they glamorized? Do you think our attitudes have changed when it comes to drinking and smoking?

Talk about the bad language used in the movie. Did it seem necessary, or excessive? What did it contribute to the movie?

Discuss the violence in the movie. What impact did it have? What consequences were there? Does exposure to violent media desensitize kids to violence?

The film is both funny and dark. How well do you think these were balanced? Did the film remind you of any other films you've seen?

Movie Details

• In theaters : October 21, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : December 13, 2022
• Cast : Colin Farrell , Brendan Gleeson , Barry Keoghan
• Director : Martin McDonagh
• Studio : Searchlight Pictures
• Genre : Comedy
• Topics : Friendship
• Run time : 109 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language throughout, some violent content and brief graphic nudity
• Awards : BAFTA - BAFTA Winner , Golden Globe - Golden Globe Award Winner
• Last updated : July 31, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Banshees of Inisherin, The (Ireland/UK/USA, 2022)

It could be argued that The Banshees of Inisherin works better as an allegory than a straightforward narrative. There’s power in the message conveyed by writer/director Martin McDonagh’s screenplay; it’s less a drama and more a rumination about the failings of humanity.

The movie is set on a remote island off the coast of Ireland during the year-long Irish Civil War (which transpired during the second half of 1922 and the first half of 1923). It’s a raw, inhospitable place with rolling hills atop granite cliffs that plunge into the raging waters below. Ben Davis’ camerawork captures the untamed beauty of the place while McDonagh takes care to get the period details right – this is a primitive world where electricity hasn’t yet arrived and communication is via letters that can take weeks to reach their destination. Life is basic in the small village where everyone knows not only everyone else’s name but their business as well. Purpose #1 in life is tending to the farms and animals that provide sustenance. Leisure time encompasses playing music, reading books, and sitting in the town’s lone pub, idly chatting over a pint or two. McDonagh brings Inisherin to life so forcefully that the place almost overwhelms those living in it.

Padraic Suilleabhain (Colin Farrell) and Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) have been best friends for decades – until one day, seemingly without motivation, Colm decides he no longer wants to spend time with Padraic. There’s no specific trigger for this decision. Like a marriage in which one spouse falls out of love with the other, it has been building over time. Colm has grown tired of Padraic’s endless prattle. He wants silence so he can focus on what has meaning for him: writing music and playing it on his violin. He has come to see his former friend as an anchor whose existence is without purpose. This is a brutal shock to Padraic. His life has three foundational pillars: the companionship of his sister, Siobhan (Kerry Condon), with whom he shares a house; the love of his pet miniature donkey, Jenny; and the friendship of Colm, with whom he ventures to the pub every afternoon at precisely 2:00. With one of those gone, he’s teetering on the brink of collapse, lost and alone. Soon, he has attached himself to the guileless Dominic (Barry Keoghan), a youth who functions as the town idiot while being brutalized by his policeman father (Gary Lydon), but Dominic doesn’t fill the hole.

This is a reunion among friends: McDonagh, Farrell, and Gleeson having already teamed-up in 2008’s critically beloved In Bruges . I didn’t love that movie (I felt let down by the third act) nor did I adore McDonagh’s follow-up, Seven Psychopaths (with Farrell but not Gleeson), which suffered from the same late-film narrative problems. But his third outing, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (with neither Farrell nor Gleeson but with Kerry Condon), is his most complete film to-date. Although The Banshees of Inisherin isn’t as emotionally fraught as Three Billboards , it avoids the narrative collapses of McDonagh’s earlier productions and delivers a movie whose themes linger and demand to be ruminated over late at night, while lying abed.

While I won’t argue that this is McDonagh’s best film, it is unquestionably his most Irish. And, despite the presence of a couple of internationally recognizable faces, The Banshees of Inisherin is designed more for art film audiences than those who camp out in multiplexes awaiting the next blockbuster. If indies are endangered then movies like this are to be embraced. Although the film will work if streamed (or otherwise viewed at home), a case can be made for seeing The Banshees of Inisherin theatrically. The tapestry is large enough for the big screen and the overall experience will reward the movie-goer far more than something slick and superficial like Don’t Worry Darling .

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Season 2 (2018), season 3 (2022), season 4 (2026), screenrant reviews, the banshees of inisherin review: farrell & gleeson execute comedic irish goodbye [tiff].

Martin McDonagh returns to form by with the tale of a non-romantic breakup, the sadness of being dumped, and the tricky business of dumping someone.

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Review: Nobody Has To Know a ‘gentle version’ of Banshees of Inisherin

Nobody Has To Know was directed by Tim Mietlants and Bouli Lanners. It stars Lanners and Michelle Fairley. Photo / Versus Production

Nobody Has To Know (PG, 99 mins). Streaming on Neon; renting on AroVision and Apple TV.

Directed by Tim Mielants and Bouli Lanners.

Reviewed by Jen Shieff.

Not a lot happens in this romantic, slightly dreamy tale of a middle-aged couple getting together. It’s an easy watch, in many ways a gentle version of Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin (2022), without the horrific elements or interpersonal strife.

The remoteness of the Outer Hebrides makes an ideal setting for the slow development of the two isolated main characters, emotionally bereft at the start, passionately involved by the end.

It’s beautifully filmed by Frank van den Eeden, whose cinematography captures the dramatic beauty of the Isle of Lewis. Unsurprisingly, one of the directors, Bouli Lanners, who also plays the male lead, Philippe, was an artist before he became an actor/director.

Opposite Lanners’ Phil is emotionally remote Millie (Michelle Fairley), the daughter of Phil’s farmer boss, Angus (Julian Glover), for whom Phil works alongside Angus’s nephew Brian (Andrew Still).

When Phil has a stroke and loses his memory, Millie goes to collect him from the hospital. He has no recollection of her, or of anything else, and she takes the opportunity to form a bond with him.

For reasons never fully explained but strongly implied, Millie feels the need to lie to Phil in order for him to want to connect with her. She pretends they used to be in a relationship. When he hears that, he asks her, “Are we still together?” He’s dazed and confused but clearly hopeful.

Adding a heartwarming, almost parallel layer to the main plot is the way Nigel, a Dalmatian, who lives in Phil’s house, attaches himself to Brian.

Phil is seemingly aware Nigel is not actually his dog, having no recollection of how Nigel happened to be living in his house, but all the same, he’s keen for Nigel and Brian to end up together.

Issues of the heart reveal themselves at almost every turn but nobody asks intrusive questions; it’s up to viewers to work out what’s been going on and why.

It’s a production with European film-making in its bones: Frank van den Eeden has cinematography skills learned in the Netherlands while Bouli Lanners is Belgian, his character Phil speaking English with a French/Belgian accent, emphasising his dislocation from home.

His French-speaking brother Benoît (Clovis Cornillac) shows up, unnecessarily for the plot but necessarily for audiences to resent his presence the way Phil does.

Michelle Fairley’s understated Millie, mocked by locals for being “as frigid as icecream”, unravels beautifully from an apparently mean-spirited estate agent who doesn’t care if her P.A. takes a lunch break or not to a fully-fledged, emotionally connected person.

People are inserted into the windswept landscape in a way that’s reminiscent of Thomas Hardy’s isolated characters blending with their rural environments, timeless surroundings absorbing them, suggesting aspects of human nature that survive beyond lifespans.

Nobody Has To Know is about the delight experienced by those who find their soulmate after a long time of being alone.

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