Review of Bring Them Down, directed by Christopher Andrews

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

I remember when I reached around the one hundred mark I was getting discouraged and decided I needed a few days for a brain break. I took a step back then and thought long and hard about what I wanted to do, and realized I was in the financial privilege at that moment when I could just watch a few movies a couple of days in a row.

Because my budget was limited though, I had to be picky about what kinds of subscriptions I was having at any moment of time. Subscriptions can really add up when you’re on a limited budget, so when I was sitting down and doing the math, I determined I had to pick and choose my battles.

I had MUBI for a bit because of the $1 for three months deal, so I crammed through all of the movies I wanted to watch instead of going to Kanopy or Netflix for a bit. It was on MUBI that I watched Bring Them Down, which was not something I planned to watch originally, but found it to be a wild ride.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to go on and on throughout an introduction, as I know these are not what people are here for.

In the Irish countryside, two men get into a brutal and violent feud.

Something to note about this movie is that it is not told in chronological order, but for the sake of my sanity and getting this summary section to be more coherent, I’m going to present it in chronological order.

The main character in this movie is Michael, who lives with his handicapped father (he’s in a wheelchair) in the Irish countryside. It’s just them too, as his mother was killed in a car crash, and his girlfriend, Caroline, was also in the car and wounded. But in the present day, Caroline is married to another shepherd: Gary.

Gary and Caroline live right by Michael, which leads to conflict when they end up in debt after a storm causes damage to their property. Their son, Jack, decides to steal some of Michael’s rams in order to help the family out and get some cash flowing in. Michael does realize this immediately when he finds the rams for sale at a local market, although Jack is trying to say he found the rams dead on the property.

Jack and his father get into a car accident after taunting Michael about the situation, although Michael picks them up and takes them home. Regardless, Gary threatens Michael and tells Jack to kill the rams. That night, Jack and his friend come to Michael’s farm to maim the sheep by slicing their legs, and Michael comes outside to find all of his sheep painfully bleeding in the grass.

Michael chases after the truck, and his dog goes after Jack. Jack stabs the dog, and Michael is forced to put his dog down with the sheep. He finally tells his father what happened, and his dad requests that the head of whoever did this be brought to him. Michael has the opportunity to shoot Gary, but doesn’t want to, and kills the builder (who Michael thinks is the real culprit) and puts his head in the bag to bring back to his father.

Caroline helps Michael out when she sees him walking home, and after seeing the knife she tells him it was Jack. When she drives him home with Jack, they find Michael’s father passed out in the front yard. She leaves them behind to get a doctor, and Michael tells his now conscious father he brought the wrong head.

Jack tries to flee after this, and Michael goes after him. Jack pulls out a knife and tries to knick Michael, but gets himself stabbed in the process. Michael gives up and takes ack back home, where Caroline has a rifle and is terrified after realizing a severed head was in the bag.

He tells Caroline he’s sorry for the car crash years prior, and she leaves with Jack. Michael then goes inside of his home, finished with the notion of revenge.

Overall Thoughts

So I went into this movie not expecting what happened in it, as I had only read the synopsis and had not heard of it before. I was not expecting the brutal violence that happened to animals specifically, and those scenes were really hard to watch—if you’re sensitive to animal cruelty, this might not be the movie for you. I almost cried over those poor sheep.

Anyway, violence aside, I did enjoy the themes and story of this movie. It’s very much a revenge movie, but Michael is someone who actually can’t follow through with his chosen mode of vengeance. It shows how an ordinary person, even when pushed to the right mindset, still can’t follow through because of his morality.

It’s an interesting movie to watch—it seems like a blanket statement, but it’s true. I think that if you’re interested in this kind of movie, then it’s worth watching at least once if you get a MUBI subscription, but if not it might not be worth going out of your way to watch. But if it is, go watch it!

Follow me below on Instagram, Letterboxd, and Goodreads for more.