Reviewing Movies

[Be Ware; There be Spoilers here.]

As with the ash of the title there are no black and whites in this movie. No one is innocent here. Not the self-indulgent younger brother who committed a triple murder at eighteen because he thought he was protecting his older brother. Not the priest with a past who helped fake his death and escape from the neighbourhood. Certainly not Whitey the Irish hood who runs this section of Hell’s Kitchen and was complicit in the cover-up. And not Francis the older brother who worked with his father as Whitey’s enforcer.

The uneasy equilibrium of the neighbourhood is upset when the younger brother Sean decides he must return to his old haunts and commits the indiscretion of appearing in public. He wants to re-establish a relationship with a wife who has thought him dead for three years and had intercourse with his older brother in spite of the fact that she has a son. As with so many Irish tales there can be no happy endings here. Yes, the younger brother appears to make a getaway with his wife and the child he didn’t know he had; but at the cost of his Brother’s life. Throughout the music casts a pall of foreboding on a movie that proceeds inexorably to its ultimate end. Nothing happens quickly here. Ed Burns who wrote and directed this opus finally gets to script the hit that ends his life.

In concert with the Ash Wednesday theme the closing music is a free translation of the Irish Hymn, Be Thou My Vision, performed in a minor key.