The Butcher Boy

Based on a book by Pat McCabe, The Butcher Boy details the rebellious antics of a young man named Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens) and the impact his increasingly violent escapades have on various periphery figures. It’s clear right from the outset that The Butcher Boy possesses few attributes designed to capture and sustain the viewer’s interest, with the movie’s hands-off atmosphere perpetuated by a loathsome protagonist that’s devoid of compelling or even likeable attributes. The nails-on-a-chalkboard nature of Owens’ seriously grating performance ensures that Francie remains an almost stunningly off-putting figure from beginning to end, which, in turn, ensures that there’s simply never a point at which the viewer is able to work up an ounce of interest in or sympathy for the character’s exploits. Beyond its disaster of a protagonist, The Butcher Boy suffers from an excessively meandering narrative that clumsily lurches from one irrelevant, uninteresting episode to the next – with the subsequent lack of momentum, which is total and complete, persisting right through to the movie’s nigh incomprehensible final stretch. The end result is as misguided and worthless an adaptation as one can easily recall, and it’s ultimately difficult not to wonder just what drew Jordan, an otherwise reliable filmmaker, to this absolutely abhorrent material.

no stars out of ****