On the surface, Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell have little in common beyond their Irish heritage. Separated by more than 20 years, Gleeson is a consummate character actor who didn't begin acting in films until middle age and has maintained a low profile, while Farrell was shot out of a cannon into stardom while still in his 20s and for years kept gossip columnists busy chronicling his offscreen antics.
But appearances, of course, can be deceiving — and when Farrell and Gleeson shared the screen as a pair of hit men in Martin McDonagh's 2008 black comedy, "In Bruges," something clicked. Ever since, the two have been hoping for a chance to work together again. "I was waiting for it to happen, frankly," Gleeson says. "There's just something really special about myself and Colin. It doesn't matter if it's years between the times we see each other; we just pick up where we left off."
Now Gleeson, 67, and Farrell, 46, have reunited with McDonagh in the savagely funny yet melancholic "The Banshees of Inisherin," in theaters Friday. Set on a starkly beautiful, fictional island off the coast of Ireland during the Irish Civil War, the film centers on a much smaller, more prosaic conflict: Gleeson's brooding fiddler, Colm Doherty, abruptly decides to end his friendship with Farrell's kindhearted if rather dull Padraic Suilleabhain. Determined to cut Padraic out of his life so he can focus on his music, Colm threatens to cut off his own fingers if his old friend so much as speaks to him, creating a rift that soon begins to tear the entire community apart.
