The film opens with an object flashback in which a car is shown driving too fast through a forest road in Ireland, it then gets into an accident. His mother dies from the wreck, but his girlfriend is left alive along with him. Unfortunately, she gets disfigured. The mother of this man drives, Michael O'Shea, now resembles to a sheep farmer in his thirties. Michael is a quiet individual who notices a lot. But he speaks very little, unlike Christopher Abbott who performs in his role. Michael's girlfriend, Caroline gets married to a farmer named Gary who lives in a family estate. Meanwhile Michael stays onto the family sheep with his father played by Colm Meaney. He is in fact a character that possesses immense talent and yet is always regarded as being 45 years old for the past thirty years. Raymond, the son of this man, happens to be a sugar coated father as everyone would say. He is, however, a hot headed and proud man, controlling his family with his dry temper. He uses lashing out as a form of communication.
Each day Michael drives to those twisting roads. Whenever he shifts his gaze through the window, he must contemplate on the incident that took place. It is certain that we do. Even though Michael does not analyze his own thoughts, it is pretty clear he is in search of atonement for the overwhelming guilt that he carries within himself which works as a sin.
As Michael looks for a few missing rams, he’s told by Gary’s son Jack (Barry Keoghan) that they showed up sick onto the family farm and had to be put down. He further finds out that the animals are indeed alive and are being sold with changed ownership marks. There’s only one way this story can go. “Bring me his f—-g head,” Michael’s father says.
The haunting past and potential new tragedies cast a shadow over “Bring Them Down” as if the sky above is overcast. Written and directed by feature debut Christopher Andrews, the story is slow burning yet filled with tension and centers around a close knit community of sheep farmers located in modern rural Ireland. It has been referred to as a revenge movie, which it is. But perhaps it is more accurate to call it a revenge movie. The setting of Andrews’ screenplay paints local feuds, which are not new and have continued to exist regardless of progress made in technology or from changes in the economy (Gary is developing his property for vacation homes, a move that the traditionalist Ray snarkily describes as “diversifying”).
The basic premise is that it is a movie that has been done before with slight alterations. The story itself is Biblical ancient. The film's intimate savagery – which comes as a shock and is filmed with a seemingly frantic handheld camera – is Old Testament. The questions however are New.
Where does one draw the line with forgiveness? Is there really a sensible reason to enact justice (or what some may call revenge), or perhaps it’s better to simply call it a day? One can only disengage to some extent, for there comes a moment when it becomes apparent that all men in this narrative are for all intents and purposes lost (Caroline, too, in her own way). The only thing these people have to cling to is their code, which, in American spelling, translates into a gunfighter’s mantra in a Western: a man does what a man has to do. (Ominous hip-hop is inseperable from the soundtrack of life, blasting tinny from car speakers, linking one internally feuding subculture to another.)
This is a relatively quiet movie that embraces its smallness and shifts its focus towards more ferocious elements vigor. For all the violence and heartlessness, this is still a relatively quiet movie. It does not approach us as an educator with a sermon, rather like a hardened man at a bar who has had just the right amount to drink, reckless enough to be unhindered and vulnerable, but not enough to start lashing out at every stray patron that encroaches his aura and before him. (Most of the men in the story, however, are those the latter.”
When Gary goes to Ray to request permission to pass through his property because a bridge was washed out, Ray refuses it. Gary drives through the gate, cursing the old man as he rumbles through the woods.)
- Abbott is the film’s anchor. He accomplishes the difficult task of hiding away or stifling a big part of this character’s turmoil until Michael is primed to let loose against the actual and imagined adversaries. Keoghan matches him; although at first the film misleads us to think that he has been cut from the main action and put into the background. In any case, the movie places certain expectations for the audience and then defies them when the story’s chronological order is shuffled, much like how flashbacks operated in the noir thrillers of the 1940s and 50s. The suggestion is that the film might take another route instead of the well beaten path. And yes, it puts in a little bit of effort in a less traveled direction. But places like this are done certain ways. There happens to be room for another round of wreckage around each turn. If none comes about on its own, it will be created.
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