As the film opens, he is returning from a decade abroad - he left before the bloody war of independence (which Loach brought to life for 2006's Cannes winner The Wind That Shakes The Barley) - and during that time he's picked up some political viewpoints that don't go down too well with the hidebound hierarchies in his native County Leitrim.
His plan to reopen the local community hall where young people had met to study, socialise and (horror!) dance, brings him into a head-on collision with the landowners and the church (the "masters and the pastors" someone calls them) . "What is this craze for pleasure?" thunders the local priest, railing against "the Los Angelisation of Ireland".
Like Barley and like the Spanish Civil War picture Land and Freedom from the 90s, this one has a few too many lines with the flavour of dialectical argument: politics always bubbles beneath the surface of a Loach film but the story can get crowded out.
But it's kept afloat by handsome cinematography, which uses the land's deep green and the milky light gorgeously, and some great performances (Norton and Scott as priests who don't see eye to eye; Kirby as Oonagh, Jimmy's not-forgotten love). Lovely.
- TimeOut
