‘Perrier’s Bounty’ overflows with cheap nihilism

On the Cine Synapse rating scale, this film receives a:

Nah
Take It or Leave It
Well Worth Your While
Must See

***

A nihilistic Irish caper film that blends grotesque, casual violence with slapdash humor, Perrier’s Bounty is bountiful in talent applied to a turnoff of a script by Mark O’Rowe.

Cillian Murphy is Michael, in debt to merciless mobster Darren Perrier (Brendan Gleeson). As Michael happens into a robbery-blackmail scheme he hopes will spew the cash he needs, his life is complicated by a love-sick suicidal neighbor, Brenda (Jodie Whittaker), and an out-of-the-blue appearance by Michael’s estranged pop, Jim (Jim Broadbent). An unruly assortment of miscellaneous other thugs, womanizers, and Satanically inclined dog trainers complete the ominous package.

Director Ian Fitzgibbon hits very 90s notes in the Guy Ritchie/Quentin Tarantino-imbued self-awareness of the narrative, to the point of actually having a slacker-ominous voice-over of doom. The project accompanies its heaping plate of head bashings, leg breakings, shootings, and attack-dog mayhem with a chilled glass of low-end metaphysics. But the picture is too busy being cool for us to take its tired hipster-philosophical affectations terribly seriously.

Too bad, because Fitzgibbon knows how to pull robust performances from a strong cast; his pacing is spry (you may be revolted by the movie, but you won’t be bored); and he gives an evocative feel for the vacant lots, abused warehouses, and corrupt watering holes of the Dublin ganglands.

Murphy is compelling as the hapless, instinctively good-hearted, self-sabotaging everyman toughie. Gleeson exudes spooky, fleshy calm, and savors the acid ironies of Perrier’s politically correct soliloquies on the subject of gay gangster equality. Whittaker makes us feel for Brenda’s wronged and love-blind womanhood. And Broadbent is superb as a coke- and sleep-starved ne’er-do-well with deep-running loyalties and some surprising handy criminal skill sets.

David Holmes’s percussive rock-jazz score helps propel Seamus Deasy’s streetwise cinematography. And there are some smart moments compliments of stunt, effects, and makeup personnel.

But despite its guise of escorting us on a tour of colorful-character-stuffed criminal hell, Bounty feels more like a screenwriter’s soulless creative calisthenics. It leaves us fairly breathless, but feeling none the healthier for the exercise.