Producer-director and veteran Clint Eastwood collaborator Robert Lorenz is now saddling up for this “Donegal western”. It is an action thriller that finds the cowboy spirit in the lush rolling grasslands of County Donegal in Ireland’s north-west, neighbouring Northern Ireland but geographically sequestered from the rest of the Republic.
In 1974, at the height of the Troubles, an IRA gang led by icy-hearted and potty-mouthed Doireann (Kerry Condon) accidentally kills a bunch of kids with a Belfast bomb blast. Without especially regretting the collateral damage, she leads her crew as they escape over the border into Donegal to lie low, fetching up on the outskirts of a village that appears populated by adorable stereotypes. These include a stolid Garda officer (Ciarán Hinds), and his best mate, widower Finbar Murphy (Liam Neeson), a quiet man who apparently makes a living dealing in secondhand books – and shyly courting neighbour Rita (Niamh Cusack).
