With St. Patrick’s Day just around the corner, what better time to celebrate the richness and brilliance of Irish culture? The drinking, the foul language, the misogyny, the constant brutal violence at the slightest provocation…well, that’s how 101 Films and The Irish Mob‘s writer/director Patrick McKnight have chosen to mark the occasion, anyway.
There are basically two main strains of gangster movie. There is the glossy and operatic American style, exemplified in such classics as The Godfather, Goodfellas, Carlito’s Way, Heat and so many other classics; truly an embarrassment of riches. Then there is the grim and low-rent British variety, not so much an embarrassment of riches as just an embarrassment. The Irish Mob looks East across the Irish Sea for inspiration, rather than West across the Atlantic, and comes up with something equally nasty and formulaic. It’s all there – the police cat-and-mouse, the impetuous acts of violence, the voiceover which spells out exactly how we should be interpreting what’s happening on screen. This last tendency is particularly frustrating, for the film already aptly demonstrates its key themes, no further elaboration necessary. The main lesson here, as ever, is basically that crime doesn’t pay. One wonders, then, why there is such an endless public appetite for this subject matter, allowing films like this one basically to be churned out, needing no more budget than a few hopeful actors and a mate’s flat to shoot in for the weekend.
Against all odds, though, The Irish Mob actually succeeds in its admittedly modest ambitions, which is more than can be said for the vast majority of films within this particular niche. Perhaps it’s solely that the Dublin underworld lends an impression of freshness, as opposed to the apparently endless parade of films showing us the grot of Essex. Bonus points also go to its very cool opening title sequence and song, announcing up front that, while The Irish Mob may not be anything desperately special, it’s executed with style.
★★★☆☆