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United Kingdom, Ireland · 2020
1h 40m
Director Nick Rowland
Starring Cosmo Jarvis, Barry Keoghan, Niamh Algar, Ned Dennehy
Genre Crime, Drama
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In darkest rural Ireland, ex-boxer Douglas 'Arm' Armstrong has become the feared enforcer for the drug-dealing Devers family, whilst also trying to be a good father to his autistic five-year-old son, Jack. Torn between these two families, Arm's loyalties are tested when he is asked to kill for the first time.
CineVue by Christopher Machell
Calm with Horses’ driving concern – the corrosive nature of violence on the self – is rendered in brutal, empathic precision, while the recovery of its protagonist’s humanity as it teeters on the cliff edge is simply heartbreaking.
The Irish Times by Donald Clarke
Full marks for character and setting. Less enthusiastic hurrahs for narrative arc.
The Film Stage by Jared Mobarak
The result might not be unique in its narrative about a misunderstood man devoid of the means to get out of his own way, but Calm with Horses is stunning in its execution nonetheless.
The Hollywood Reporter by Keith Uhlich
Director Nick Rowland couldn't ask for a more magnetically tormented character to anchor his low-key-to-a-fault feature debut.
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
The movie tries to convince you that Douglas is better than his worst self and can transcend the dehumanizing degradations in which he’s mired. But not even the filmmakers seem convinced, which may explain why they embrace baroque brutality topped by a dollop of audience-mollifying sentimentality.
The Observer (UK) by Mark Kermode
Buoyed by Joe Murtagh’s screenplay, which keeps the warring elements of the narrative elegantly balanced throughout, the excellent ensemble cast create a complex emotional ecosystem through which our troubled antihero stumbles in search of his identity.
The film's poetry is like the close-up of the clenched fist that Rowland uses to introduce us to his character study — there’s a thoughtfulness behind the tight fingers, maybe even a broken soul, but its expression is that of a blunt object.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
It’s powerfully and pugnaciously acted, and horses are brought in – as animals often are in social-realist movies – as symbols of redemptive nobility. But I felt that in narrative terms it turned into a cul-de-sac of macho violence.
First-time feature director Nick Rowland makes the violence in-your-face and the scenes where Arm starts to struggle with it wrenching. Dude stages a mean Irish backroads car-chase, too.
And as a statement of intent, it’s unequivocal: Rowland combines striking visual flair with razor-wire character studies.
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