Entertainment

Boys in de hood: Irish crime flick Cardboard Gangsters reviewed

David Roy checks out crime film Cardboard Gangsters from up and coming Irish director Mark O'Connor, which centres on rival drug dealers on a tough Dublin housing estate

Glenner (Paul Alwright), Jay (John Connors), Cobbie (Ryan Lincoln) and Dano (Fionn Walton) take on the local drugs czar in new Irish crime flick Cardboard Gangsters
Glenner (Paul Alwright), Jay (John Connors), Cobbie (Ryan Lincoln) and Dano (Fionn Walton) take on the local drugs czar in new Irish crime flick Cardboard Gangsters Glenner (Paul Alwright), Jay (John Connors), Cobbie (Ryan Lincoln) and Dano (Fionn Walton) take on the local drugs czar in new Irish crime flick Cardboard Gangsters

THEY say crime doesn't pay: however, for some of those living hand to mouth on Dublin's Darndale housing estate in Mark O'Connor's stylish low-budget crime flick Cardboard Gangsters, a little low-level drug dealing is often the only way to make ends meet.

Budding DJ Jay Connolly (John Connors from Love/Hate) has been supplementing his dole with the odd gig and dealing 'yokes' on the estate with his life-long buddies.

However, when the social get wind of Jay's musical activities, they suspend his benefits.

This knockback couldn't have come at a worse time, as Jay's ma has just ignored her son's warnings by borrowing a load of cash from local loan shark/drug kingpin Derra (Jimmy Smallhorne).

With mouthy right-hand man and wannabe hardman Dano (Fionn Walton) in Jay's ear saying they should "whack" the big man and take over, and other low-level crews starting to muscle in on the estate's soft drugs trade including a troupe led by IRA-connected "Nordie b*****ds" Evers and Micka Dempsey (Graham Earley and Corey McKinley), it's not long before the relatively level-headed Jay decides to take the plunge into more serious dealing.

Slinging heroin is where the real money is in Darndale, but Derra has had that side of things sown-up for years on his fiercely guarded turf. Luckily, Dano has an outside connection who can supply the lads with some 'brown' to get them started.

What could possibly go wrong?

As the good times begin to roll, Cardboard Gangsters becomes a familiar tale of young, macho men paying a high price for making 'easy money'.

While the script – co-penned by director O'Connor and star Connors – sounds bang-on in terms of capturing the at times impenetrable patois of its north Dublin setting, there are also frequent lapses into cringe-inducing cliche and place-holder dialogue that probably should have been revised into something more interesting or cut altogether before the film hit cinemas.

Its female characters definitely get something of a short shrift. Derra's moll, Kim (Kierston Wareing) is such a broadly drawn femme fatale she might as well have a health warning tattooed on her forehead – not that it stops Jay from making one of the biggest mistakes a wannabe gangster can make.

To be fair, the big man makes quite a few basic blunders which suggest he's never seen a crime film before – or Love/Hate, for that matter.

Jay's girlfriend Sarah (Toni O'Rourke) is lumbered with one particularly terrible scene which reduces her previously sweet and fairly nuanced character to a screeching fishwife, while Jay's mum Fionna Hewitt-Twamley is required to recite some of the flattest lines in movie history, even during one of the film's most emotional moments.

In proper crime movie tradition, the individual personalities of Jay's four-man gang are so broadly drawn they resemble a thuggish boyband: Big-mouthed thicko Dano, the soulful, cautious Glenner (Paul Alwright) and the cute, puppyish Cobbie (Ryan Lincoln).

The latter pair do well with the material they're given – though you have to wonder how long any crew of party-mad gangsters would put up with Glenner's constant 'negging' – but Walton frequently goes a little too big as the hotheaded Dano.

However, a superb lead performance from Connors keeps the film from going off the rails during its frequent wobbles. It's also quite funny in places, while a pumping Irish hip-hop soundtrack and some well-staged action/fight scenes help the picture motor along towards a seriously gruesome climax that lets O'Connor off the hook for having his cake and eating it in terms of any accusations of glamorising his subject matter.

For all its flaws and dearth of original ideas, Cardboard Gangsters is still an efficiently made and highly watchable crime flick – it's just that, once the credits roll, you'll be left with the sense that it could have been so much better.



Rating: 6/10



CARDBOARD GANGSTERS (18, 92mins) Crime, drama.


Starring: John Connors, Fionn Walton, Kierston Wareing, Jimmy Smallhorne, Toni O'Rourke, Ciaran McCabe, Paul Alwright, Alan Clinch, Damien Dempsey.


Director: Mark O'Connor

Cardboard Gangsters is showing now at QFT Belfast and other cinemas. Star John Connors will introduce this evening's screening at QFT, see Queensfilmtheatre.com for ticket details.