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Perrier's Bounty
Moving Pictures
September 2009
By Barrett Hooper
It would be easy to slag this wickedly black crime comedy as an In Bruges imitation. Indeed, I overheard several people waiting in line to see Perrier's Bounty describe it as exactly that. Certainly, I understand the comparison, considering both are about back-alley Irish lowlifes and both co-star Brendan Gleeson. But while In Bruges, which also starred Colin Farrell, sought to wring pathos and humor from the hit-man genre, Perrier's Bounty has something entirely more romantic and gentle of heart in mind.
Cillian Murphy stars as Michael, a well-meaning lay-about who runs into a spot of trouble when he can't make good on his debt to a small-time Dublin gangster named Perrier (Gleeson). Soon, Michael's got a price on his head—and a dead bounty hunter in his foyer, courtesy of the fetching blonde neighbor (Jodie Whitaker) with the cheating boyfriend. Then things start to get completely fouled up. There's a body to be buried, a botched burglary, a double-crossing loan shark, two overeager parking cops, a pack of rabid dogs and Michael's estranged father (Jim Broadbent in full-on looney-tunes mode), who shows up to tell him he's dying and would Michael mind scoring his old man some blow.
As cockeyed and convoluted as that sounds, the story maintains credulity according to its internal movie logic—if only barely—and it motors along thanks to the smart comic interplay between Murphy, Broadbent and Whitaker and the deadpan delivery of Gleeson as a cruel but not unreasonable crook.
Oh yes, about that romantic bit that's actually at the root of this twisted little caper: Cillian Murphy has eyes like shards of arctic ice. Even Sinatra and Newman would marvel. Yet his baby blues are never more expressive, never more alive, than when they are bloodied and bruised and looking at Whitaker.
