White Irish Drinkers

Veteran television director John Gray brings a rare sensitivity to this semi-autobiographical film set in the Irish working class community of Brooklyn, New York. The films opens with two brothers engaged in a robbery. The older one is on a course to become a violent criminal. The younger one, who shows promise as a painter, is dragged into it. When they decide to pull off a robbery at the concert hall when the younger son works, the tensions between the two and their hard-drinking father and colorless mother come to a crisis point. Veteran actors Karen Allen and Stephen Lang give earthy performances as the parents who are stuck in their dead end lives. However, the real breakthrough is young Nick Thurston who plays the artist brother with great soul… as he realizes that art is his way out of a violent and povery stricken childhood. In short, a great New York movie…