The Butcher Boy
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DVD Cover Information Author: Patrick Mc Cabe Actor: Aisling O'Sullivan, Alan Boyle, Andrew Fullerton, Eamonn Owens, Sinead O'Connor Director: Neil Jordan Brand: Warner Brothers Writer: Patrick Mc Cabe Producer: Neil Jordan Writer: Neil Jordan Other Contributor: Elliot Goldenthal Producer: Redmond Morris Producer: Stephen Woolley DVD: Region Code 1 Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1 Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen Picture Format: 1.78:1 Running Time: 110 minutes DVD Release Date: 2007-02-13 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Model: 58563 Studio: Warner Home Video Product features:
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Movie Reviews of The Butcher Boy
Movie Review: A well-directed, well-acted, repulsive, unredeemed film
Summary: 1 Stars
This film is well-done from every technical viewpoint. The direction is good, the acting is solid, the writing is crisp, the cinematography is near perfect.
The problem is the subject matter--children behaving very, very badly, and the reasons why--which is at first annoying, then repellent, and finally reaches the point of complete savagery. It's not "dark"; it's self-indulgently nihilistic and brutal. We're supposed to understand and even empathize with the main character's descent into the depths, but the movie just seems to revel in it. There's no redemption, no change, nothing to reward the time spent witnessing the vile results of this one character's selfish destructiveness (having an alcoholic father and a depressed mother doesn't remotely excuse or even explain the things he does).
The film really has to work to enable him to get away with it, also. Nobody, neither adults nor other kids, are capable of besting this little monster physically, which is thoroughly unbelievable. Whether or not you believe in corporal punishment (I don't), if you watch this film you'll be aching to see just one person properly knock the snot out of this brat.
There are films about awful behavior that are more artistically successful and give you far more to think about in payment for the extreme unpleasantness--A Clockwork Orange (one of my all-time favorites) and In the Company of Men spring to mind. This movie is nowhere near that league; it's almost-entirely unredeemed sadism. Spare yourself the trip through the gutter and watch one of those films instead.
[ One side note: this film is billed as "dark comedy", but it's not funny (and that doesn't really seem like what it was trying for). The patter from the beast is amusing, and the rhythms of Irish speech are captured well, but there's very little here that merits the term "comedy"--dark or otherwise. I don't consider this a strike against the film; my impression is that it was just the result of marketing people trying to portray it as something it's not. ]