‘Amongst The Wolves’: Galway Review

Dir: Mark O’Connor. Republic of Ireland. 2024. 101mins

Director Mark O’Connor, writing with his main actor Luke McQuillan, howls at more than a few themes in Amongst The Wolves: homelessness, PTSD, drug-running, murder (including a dog killing) and a custody battle, the film getting a little lost in the woods before re-emerging as a bloody revenge drama. McQuillan is its sturdiest asset, grounding an increasingly complex plot with a centred performance as Danny, an Irish veteran of conflict in Afghanistan who is attempting to live on the fringes of society after losing his marriage, home, and possibly his beloved son.

O’Connor uses familiar crime drama building blocks in a distinctly Irish way

The film, which premieres at Galway’s Fleadh, attempts too much to ever be judged fully successful, with its flaws somehow mirroring those of its taciturn protagonist. Danny has retreated from society into a tent by a canal where he’s jeered at and mugged by local thugs, but he has too much righteous fire ever to give up on his search for justice. Likewise, Amongst The Wolves is unyielding in attempts to cover all the pieces of Danny’s fractured life, plus that of Will (Daniel Fee), a homeless teenager who has fallen victim to local junkyard criminal Power (Aidan Gillan) – not to mention an attractive charity worker whose brother recently died from an overdose. Ultimately, the film backs itself into a corner where it can only find resolution in a predictable if cathartic spree of violence – although it does leave the viewer on an interesting note.

O’Connor (Cardboard Gangsters) uses familiar crime drama building blocks in a distinctly Irish way. He captures Dublin’s enduring homelessness problem as it collides with immigration in a manner that’s more interesting than the gang element at the film’s core. Danny is living apart from society, his only contact being with workers at soup kitchens and charity shops, when he encounters Will, a drug-dealing teenager now estranged from his mother and who owes the psychotic Power much more than he could ever pay off. They form an almost father-son relationship as Danny bounces around his ex-partner and their child (he has seemingly unfettered access to the child’s primary school), and Will makes one stupid decision after another.

Having juggled with social issues, though, the film returns to its main interest – Power and his gang of heavies, played by Game Of Thrones’ Quinn as a variation on his character in the TV drama Kin.  Perhaps that familiarity is what makes the speech about killing his dog less compelling than it might have seemed on paper: it’s clear that Power is a paper-thin psycho who delights in taunting and entrapping teenagers and army veterans alike. But characterisation in Amongst The Wolves is thin on the ground outside the leads: the film’s two women are the angry wife and the kindly charity worker, at the opposite ends of a spectrum that stretches credulity.

Tech credits are satisfactory: this is the Ireland of junkyards and ponies, tattooed necks in shiny shellsuits and fast fists, think-later. The score has the habit of suddenly, almost alarmingly, dropping in for emphasis before retreating to the next round. McQuillan gives good account of Danny, with much going on behind the facade that could have been made more explicit yet makes for a strong final note. Perhaps that imbalance of characterisation across the film comes through his having co-written the screenplay, but, either way, we can expect to hear more from this grounded young actor.