Film Reviews

Wide Open Spaces

• Rating:
• Director: Tom Hall
• Starring:
• Details: Ardal O'Hanlon, Ewan Bremner, Owen Roe, Gerard McSorley.

Wide Open Spaces has all the earmarks of a Coen Brothers comedy, mixed up with a little Withnail & I and even some Beckett: indigenous oddball characters, unusual settings, subtle character humour and bizarre plotting. Yet it never seems to connect the dots of its influences.
When they land themselves in hot water after selling fake George Best photos on eBay, Myles (O'Hanlon) and Austin (Bremner) move from Dublin to the country where they land a job at a Famine Theme Park, the brainchild of dodgy entrepreneur Gerard Ring (Roe). Hopes that this would be a new beginning are soon dashed when 'cash flow problems' inhibit wages arriving on time and the two friends have to turn debt collectors for Ring to receive what's due. Will their tenuous friendship survive this?
That's the plot, but Wide Open Spaces is really a comment on the recession. Despite Gerard McSorley's extended cameo (where he smiles - Gerard McSorley!) as minister under fire because of financial irregularities, Owen Roe's finger-in-every-pie businessman is the personification of the government; the naive and innocent Austin's faith that Ring will come good re payment smacks of Arthur Mathews thoughts on Ireland repeatedly voting these boyos into office. But we're as bad as them - dishonesty at all levels is the theme here. When Myles and Austin discover an envelope stuffed with money in Roe's car, they first don't tell each other about it and then debate whether or not to do a bunk with it. Wide Open Spaces works best when Owen Roe is on-screen. He's given the best lines and knows how to deliver them. Don Wycherley's Liam Dulally is fun too.
When it doesn't work, it's flat and rather dull. The scenes between O'Hanlon and Bremner rarely throw up a funny line. Like its directionless heroes, the film drifts about looking for something to do. It occasionally locates Morwenna Banks's wealthy landowner and art aficionado, Frankie McCafferty's dim-witted shotgun carrier, and an elderly lonely heart, but can't find them anything interesting to do.

Review by Gavin Burke