(15) 88min

After an accidental shooting, charismatic Dublin gangster Michael McCrea (Cillian Murphy) goes on the run with his fey neighbour Brenda (Jodie Whittaker) and his coke-snorting, hypochondriac father Jim (Jim Broadbent). Together they have to dodge not only the local police, but also the gay hitmen loyal to local gangster Perrier (Brendan Gleeson) who has put a bounty on their heads.

Despite strong work scripting Intermission and Boy A, screenwriter Mark O’Rowe indulges in long stretches of shameless cod-Tarantino riffing that falls well short of Martin McDonagh’s pithy script for In Bruges (an obvious benchmark here). None of the banter works, largely because director Ian Fitzgibbon’s thriller offers only the most rudimentary plot, and little sense of location, with London doubling for Dublin.

The result is a wearisomely obvious chase comedy, so carelessly considered that our heroes are allowed to drive around blithely in a stolen police car. Murphy certainly has charisma to burn, but it’s not enough to keep Perrier’s Bounty afloat.

General release from Fri 26 Mar.

Trailer