The Banshees of Inisherin (Digital HD)
Blu-Ray Reviews | Dec 21st, 2022
Starring: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan
Written By: Martin McDonagh
Directed By: Martin McDonagh
Studio: Searchlight Pictures
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The movie that no one can “fecking” pronounce and everybody is still talking about is available now on on-demand, streaming, as well as Blu-Ray and DVD. The Banshees of Inisherin is getting a lot of buzz for the upcoming award season, so I was curious to check it out. The direction, the acting, and the story is unique but I’m not sure everyone will like this slow-paced, dark drama.
The movie takes place during the Irish Civil War in 1923, and set off the fictional island off the Irish coast called Insisherin. Folk musician Colm (Brendan Gleeson) one day abruptly ends his lifelong friendship with his drinking buddy Pádraic (Colin Farrell). Pádraic is completely baffled why he doesn’t want to be friends anymore. He does everything he can to repair the relationship, despite warnings from his sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon) and the local troubled boy Dominic (Barry Keoghan) to just let him be. Colm takes things to a dark place when he gives Pádraic an ultimatum, everytime he attempts to talk to him or get close, he will cut off his own finger.
For some reason this is being billed as a comedy and drama but I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate. There’s definitely a lot of funny lines in the movie, some that actually made me laugh out loud. Maybe I like the dark humor but this is most certainly a drama. As much as I liked the movie, it was very slow-paced and gloomy. Something that was 2 hours probably could have been at least half hour shorter in my opinion. The scenery of Ireland is breathtaking of course, which I’m assuming was filmed at Aran Islands. I love hearing “I’m a Man You Don’t Meet Every Day,” popularized by the Pogues and sung by Cait O’Riordan. There might be an Easter egg in there too, the name of one of the shops is called O’Riordan as well.
The acting from Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson was excellent, but I think the spotlight has to go to Kerry Condon though. She was awesome in this. I loved Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards movie and thought it should have won Best Picture Oscar but I’m not sure this will win much besides maybe an acting award or screenplay. I found myself having to watch this movie in 2 nights because, well it’s just hard to watch things with 2 little ones these days. I also just felt like it was so slow paced and gloomy. I was barely 45 minutes and found myself looking at the time to see how much there is of this. Honestly, this could have been a short film and done the same thing it did. Alas, it’s 114 minutes and explores the lengths someone will go to find out why that person doesn’t want to be friends anymore. Most people would have just said “feck you then” and move on, but since it’s such a small island, I could see why Pádraic would press on. I was expecting something more from the ending as well. Thought something else might have happened but it didn’t. Things are open-ended in a way.
Since I’m reviewing the digital stream of this, I watched the movie on Vudu and it was okay in HDX. Not sure if this is available on 4k/UHD or not. There were two extras that came with the digital release. There’s Creating The Banshees of Inisherin which is a standard behind the scenes look of them filming the movie with interviews with cast & crew. Martin goes into his process, reuniting with Brendan and Colin again and other things. That’s about 17 minutes or so and the Deleted Scenes are about 5 minutes long.
The Banshees of Inisherin is a weird fecking movie. It was fecking shot fecking beautifully with fecking great direction but it’s fecking slow-paced too. If this sounds like something you’d like, give it a fecking shot.
Features:
Creating The Banshees of Inisherin
Deleted Scenes
Video:
Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Audio:
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Subtitles:
English SDH, French, Spanish
Bottom Line: A fecking weird movie but I found myself fecking liking it anyway
Running Time: 114 mins
Rating: R
Extras Rating:
Overall Rating:
