Review of The Butcher Boy (1998) by Michael J — 06 Nov 2008

What a screenplay! every minute is full of dialogue both witty and gritty in equally full measure.. so many wonderful characters.. the strange thing is that the boy who causes all the havoc is played as the most normal person in it! .

.which is a very effective device in conveying how his actions are provoked (at least in part) by those around him.. the chief negative for me was that the dialogue is so convincingly embedded in its linguistic context that I often couldn't understand it.

. but so lyrical were the voices that this was easy to forgive.