Black and Green

Black Irish, a new drama about a 15-year-old Irish American boy growing up in the shadow of his emotionally remote father and his deeply troubled family, opens in New York and Boston cinemas this week. CAHIR O'DOHERTY talks to the actors, the writer and director.

BLACK Irish, a Boston-based coming of age drama starring Brendan Gleeson and rising young star Michael Angarano, concerns the volatile relationship between a teenage boy and his spectacularly dysfunctional Irish American family.

It's familiar - some would say clichd - territory, but what saves this film are the sensitive portrayals given by the actors. Quite simply, they're sensational, with Brendan Gleeson, Michael Angarano and Tom Guiry in particular lifting this everyday tale far above the ordinary.

In an interview this week Gleeson (best known in the U.S. as Mad-Eye Moody in the Harry Potter films) told the Irish Voice why he had accepted the role in this small independently produced feature film.

"My decision was quite simple, I thought the writing was really good. I found myself fascinated by the complexity of the character and the story. Here was a man who'd been beaten down quite a lot by life and he found it difficult to get up again," Gleeson said.

In a movie where a man implores a statue of Christ on the cross to trade with him for a week in South Boston, it can fall to the actors to carry the tale. The truth is, there are some rather hackneyed plotlines involved in Black Irish - dad has cancer, his eldest son Terry is mixed up with the local Southie hoodlums, his daughter Kathleen is pregnant and is sent off to the care of the nuns (what century is this?)

Overseeing all the wrenching dramas is their - wouldn't you know - intensely religious and unforgiving mother. Considering that the youngest boy, Cole, is upstaged at every turn, it's no wonder he has to fight so hard to get a hearing.

With all those crises to contend with, it's fortunate indeed that Angarano, a gifted actor best known for his roles on 24 and Will and Grace, plays the youngest son. His struggles provide the movie's central focus, and it turns out that the young actor is more than able to carry the film.

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