White Irish Drinkers Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

White Irish Drinkers Blu-ray Movie Review

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 18, 2011

Dramas about dysfunctional families typically fall into two categories: depressive and cathartic. If depressive, the film, story or play can’t ever quite get above the machinations of unhappy people interacting unhappily, usually with some tragic element bringing everything to a head. If cathartic, a piece can ultimately attempt to convey some inner truths about the human condition, illuminate individual characters, and, if nothing else, make the viewer feel at least a little better in that even their dysfunctional family isn’t this bad. White Irish Drinkers falls somewhere in between these two extremes, with perhaps a slight tilt toward the cathartic end of the spectrum. This examination of a blue collar Irish American family in Brooklyn in 1975 is notable for some extremely fine performances, a nice feeling of time and place, and an appealing lead character, the family’s younger of two sons, Brian (Nick Thurston). There’s a foreboding sense of imminent tragedy which haunts this film and keeps everything just this side of panicked for the viewer who may think they see the script’s handwriting on the wall, but lo and behold, while tragedy does indeed strike late in the film, it’s not in the way most will probably be expecting, and that leads to at least the edges of a catharsis. Writer-director John Gray, himself an “escapee” from Brooklyn who has forged a very successful career in television (he created The Ghost Whisperer) here takes us back to his childhood haunts (literally, it seems), showing us a series of desperate characters who feel caged in the fetid streets across the river from Manhattan, a place where people find themselves with few prospects and souls perhaps more than a bit past their expiration date.

There is an undeniable by-the-numbers aspect to White Irish Drinkers that anyone with any experience with intimate “kitchen sink dramas” will recognize from virtually the first moment of the film. We get two disparate brothers, the trouble-prone elder Danny (Geoff Wigdor) who has more or less bullied younger, artistic Brian into helping him rob a local jewelry store. Danny and Brian are sons of abusive alcoholic dad Paddy (Stephen Lang) and long suffering mother Margaret (Karen Allen). Paddy regularly comes home drunk and beats the crap out of Danny, who nonetheless manages to maintain a shred of dignity by claiming that his father has never been able to knock him down. Margaret cleans up the mess while Brian escapes to the basement, slaps on a pair of insanely huge headphones to block out the noise of the incessant arguing upstairs and paints one impressionistic piece after another, scene after scene into which he’d probably like to transport himself. There’s the star-crossed love aspect as well, as Brian falls for a local girl named Shauna (Leslie Murphy) he meets at a local pub. And just for good measure, Brian works at the decrepit local movie theater, a place struggling to make ends meet by occasionally hosting rock concerts. Its owner, Whitey (Peter Riegert), perpetually in debt and one step away from being hounded by loan sharks, has a patently insane scheme to lure the Rolling Stones to his venue for one night in order to finally get his operations into the black. At least that little detail is unexpected.

Despite its predictability, White Irish Drinkers manages not to go where expected in terms of where the plot leads various characters. This is a film where many in the audience are probably going to be squirming, expecting decent but emotionally damaged Brian to follow his abused elder brother into a life of crime, with devastating results no doubt following. Without spoiling the film’s third act, while Danny does repeatedly cajole Brian to enter a life of crime (devolving to calling him “faggot” whenever he doesn’t instantly agree), the film has the courage to try something at least a little different as it careens toward personal cataclysms for several characters.

Kitchen sink dramas like White Irish Drinkers depend on performances perhaps more than other, bigger dramatic fare, and in this regard the film is blessed with a solid quintet of actors bringing five very different characters to life. While Lang is playing basically a riff on his standard tougher than nails, emotionally distant, character, he has a couple of nicely moving moments in the film he makes the most of, though the bulk of this role is pure, unadulterated bluster, something he can pull off without blinking an eye. Allen is fine in a basically hapless role, forced to be the slightly acerbic nurturing presence in an otherwise chaotic, testosterone fueled household. Riegert does fine with a shifty, duplicitous character that nonetheless manages to help Brian find a sense of self worth. But the main focus of the film is squarely on Thurston as Brian and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Wigdor as Danny, and these two young actors bring a lot of force and energy to their portrayals. They’re completely believable as brothers, even if the script occasionally (or even more than occasionally) goes to hackneyed, cliché-ridden places. Thurston especially makes a strong case for himself as a leading man of tomorrow. He has both the physical presence and the emotional maturity to be able to handle either action roles or more demanding dramatic parts.

White Irish Drinkers does have a great little coda, and a somewhat unexpected one, after things come to a boil and several seemingly disparate plot elements congeal in a rather alarming climax. After these elements have come to a head, and some quieter dramatic elements play out (including a nice scene for Allen), there’s a final showdown between Brian and his father that proves to be undeniably visceral. If White Irish Drinkers had had the courage to go to places like this a few more times in the course of unwinding its somewhat predictable story, there could have been more dramatic meat on its bones. As it stands, it’s a fitfully interesting character study made compelling by some fine acting turns, though some will find it simply to “been there, seen that” to ever rise above its generic formulations.

White Irish Drinkers Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

White Irish Drinkers is offered on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This was obviously a fairly low budget film shot on the fly, and as such, it has little of the polish or glisten of bigger budgeted fare. While the overall image is decently sharp, there are some contrast issues attributable to less than optimal lighting conditions, leading to fairly consistent crush in a number of darker scenes. Colors are somewhat desaturated, probably intentionally, giving the film a somewhat drab appearance some of the time. Fine detail is certainly acceptable if never overwhelming. The film shows best, as might be expected, in brightly lit outdoor scenes. The graveyard scene between Brian and Shauna probably shows the film off in its best light (literally and figuratively), providing ample depth of field and a nicely sharp image.

White Irish Drinkers Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

White Irish Drinkers's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 is a bristling good time, full of amazing LFE, great directionality, and some rollicking tunes written for the film by The Shillaly Brothers. The film opens with an amazing moment of panning LFE, as we soon realize the brothers are robbing a jewelry store underneath an elevated train. That, coupled with a rough and tumble Shillaly Brothers tune about confronting a bully gets the film off to a boisterous sonic start, and it manages to maintain a lot of that initial momentum throughout the rest of its running time. Though a lot of this film is filled with smaller dialogue moments, there's some excellent immersion and surround activity as we visit various Brooklyn environments, including the pub where Brian meets Shauna, and, later, the movie house where Whitey has promised a throng that The Rolling Stones will appear. Fidelity is excellent throughout the film, with well articulated dialogue and great underscore by Mark Snow.

White Irish Drinkers Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Interviews (SD; 21:02 ) with all of the principal cast and Gray provide some more background into the project and how the actors saw their characters. Lang is kind of funny in his segments, claiming a role like this scared him, when "nuttin' scares me."

White Irish Drinkers Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

White Irish Drinkers can't ever quite escape its formulaic characters and approach, but it manages to still deliver a visceral experience due to the expert acting of its lead quintet. This is one of those films that you've seen a thousand times before, so don't expect any massively innovative take on this twice- or even thrice-told tale. If you're able to put aside qualms with the plot, there is a lot to like about this little film. Thurston emerges as a leading man to keep an eye on, and the more experienced supporting cast all have chances to shine in little beats here and there. You may have seen White Irish Drinkers any number of times before in various ways, but that doesn't mean this particular version isn't worth checking out. Recommended.