Calm with Horses review – bold, brash, star-making Irish thriller

Debut features don’t get much more barnstorming than Nick Rowland’s Calm with Horses. A lean, mean, brilliantly acted crime thriller that uses its limited budget as just another weapon in its arsenal, it’s a film that makes one hell of a calling card for both Rowland and his leading man, musician-turned-actor Cosmo Jarvis.

Bulked up to near-superhuman proportions, Jarvis is Douglas Armstrong, AKA “Arm,” a former boxer turned brutal enforcer who works for small time Irish drug family the Devers. Having already impressed in supporting roles (Lady Macbeth, Peaky Blinders), Jarvis graduates to leading man status with unabashed confidence, playing Arm as terrifying yet lovable, a far-from-gentle giant who holds your sympathy and attention in equal measure. His performance, paired with smart direction from Rowland and considered writing from Joseph Murtagh, puts us right inside the character’s head – a rather tense and unpredictable place to be.

Arm tries to balance the beatings he doles out to the Devers’ enemies with a responsibility to his ex-girlfriend Ursula (Niamh Algar) and their autistic five-year-old son Jack (Kiljan Moroney). There are plenty of charming, quiet moments within this dysfunctional family unit, especially when Arm and Ursula take Jack to ride horses. It’s this animal’s soothing effect on the boy that lends the film its title.

Arm’s anxious existence comes crashing down, though, when he’s ordered to actually take a life for the first time. A friend of the Devers family has raped the 13 year old sister of Dympna (Barry Keoghan) – Arm’s friend and heir apparent to the Devers throne – and lethal justice must be served. A moral crisis sets in as Arm becomes ever more entangled in the dead end criminal affairs that burden his life.

Rowland handles the violence with great care. A lot of it happens off screen or in long shot, and it’s never revelled in, always ugly and distressing. The dingy and desolate surroundings of a forgotten slice of rural Ireland make for a timelessly bleak atmosphere, and at times Calm with Horses comes to resemble classic westerns. Rowland and DOP Piers McGrail grant the landscape an ancient majesty that both isolates and hardens the men who wander through it.

You become intimately familiar with Arm and Dympna’s common haunts, and the car they use to get around is basically a character in itself, culminating in a remarkable chase that feels genuinely fresh. Rowland was a competitive rally driver before directing Calm with Horses and his expertise in the field clearly shines through. That blitz of speed is rare, though, and most of the film keeps the tension simmering simply through terse conversations and excessive substance abuse. Murtagh’s script expertly picks out the details and rhythms of drunk chat. Words are slurred, sentences unfinished, and the volatile men become ever more dangerous.

If there’s a weak link, it’s Ned Dennehy as the ogreish big boss Paudy. He’s menacing enough, but too broadly evil, which adds a touch of comic book theatrics that overshadows Keoghan’s more believably pathetic villainy. Dympna is the kind of role that Keoghan is turning into his bread and butter, but he’s largely effective here, managing to make his manipulation of Arm’s relatively trusting nature both infuriating and tragic.

A heavy, oppressive atmosphere coats the majority of Calm with Horses, even with some blackly funny comic relief coursing through it (a subtle running gag involving the Devers women and various sofas amusingly shows off Rowland’s keen eye for detail). Uplifting it’s not, but room is found for hope and happiness, too. At a time where British cinema is in desperate need of some new blood, Rowland’s bold and brash arrival feels genuinely thrilling.