Perrier's Bounty

[pro-bassoonist]

Ian Fitzgibbon's Perrier's Bounty has been set to be released on August 16th.

Chicago Tribune:

You don't wanna mess with Dublin gangster Perrier (Brendan Gleeson). He’s got an army of baddies and an appetite for vengeance. Unfortunately, a mess is exactly what Michael (Cillian Murphy) gets when Perrier places a bounty on Michael's head for not paying his debt. Michael goes on the lam to escape the goon, accompanied by a neighbor he secretly loves (Jodie Whittaker), and a neurotic father (Jim Broadbent) with a knack for wielding a gun.

The buzz: Murphy is always a curious presence—his steely blue eyes easily shifting from desperate ("28 Days Later") to cunning ("Batman Begins"). So far, he's evaded the career pitfalls and party-hearty notoriety that have hampered other high-profile Irish transplants, Colin Farrell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. But can Murphy jack things up to the next level without sacrificing cred?

The verdict: "Perrier's Bounty" won't do much for Murphy, it keeps him squarely in the art-house circuit. That’s not a bad place to be if the film is a knockout. This one isn't. It's a decent getaway flick, but ultimately forgettable. Sure, there are chases and shootouts and loads of tough talk, but it feels like director Ian FitzGibbon, working from a script by Mark O'Rowe, merely connects dots that we already knew were there. There's also a misguided dramatic motif about death, complete with a lame voiceover from Death himself. It’s up to Gleeson and his merry band of hooligans to keep the film fun, and they do their part by bonding with each other in more ways than one.

Did you know? Gleeson knows a thing or two about playing Irish gangsters on both sides of the Atlantic, no matter what the era. He was also in Martin Scorsese's 19th-century-set "Gangs of New York."

Pro-B