Pursuit

You have to admire the ambition here. Writer-director Paul Mercier (Studs, Aifric) has a cracking idea and an impressive cast to help Pursuit along. This updating of Diarmuid & Gráinne places the Irish legend slap bang in the middle of Dublin’s criminal underworld with Liam Cunningham, Brendan Gleeson, David Pearse, Owen Roe and Ruth Bradley the familiar faces.

Cunningham is Fionn, a mean enforcer for Mr. King (Roe), who believes that his boss has lost sight of his roots living in a plush house (Fionn still mooching about on the rough estates they grew up on). The friendship has soured and turned to violence so Mr. Law (Pearse) suggests something unusual to keep the peace: a marriage of convenience between Fionn and King’s twitchy songstress daughter Gráinne (Bradley, Humans). But Gráinne has other plans: she drugs Fionn before the marriage can be consummated and forces Fionn’s loyal bodyguard Diarmuid (Ward, Jimmy’s Hall) at gunpoint to drive her into the country and to safety. To add some spice, Diarmuid and Gráinne have a bit of previous and there’s more than a whiff of sexual tension in the exchanges.

Zip. Bang. Wallop. True to the title, Pursuit hits the ground running, throwing up names and alliances and backstories in a whirlwind mix. There’s so much to get through early on that Mercier doesn’t afford himself the time to do two important things: sell the idea that this incestuous crime community is so insular that a marriage of convenience would be a goer, and that the romance is real. Ward and Bradley look like they’re having fun but the love story is too up/down/love ya/hate ya/die for ya/kill ya to register.

Mercier makes some fun nods to the original (Cunningham drinks from a goblet) but also looks for clever updates: is the invisible cloak the new identity the Spanish-based crime boss Searbhan (Gleeson in a small role) offers the escapees? This Spanish sequence is by far and away the strongest on show.

But there’s too much backstory to filter through the hard boiled dialogue; when Diarmuid is asked about “the day you killed that child…” it’s less an intriguing development, more a stop-the-press moment - ‘Wait a second… what was that?’ And it takes itself too seriously, like it’s a mini Michael Mann movie, which is a shame because every once in a while Pursuit stumbles into a comedy (Don Wycherley’s bungling burglar, the garage attendant who gets caught up in the duo’s flight). Maybe a parody of the myth might have been the way to go.

It’s got energy and solid performances (Ward up for it, Cunningham game, Bradley luminous, Dara Devaney’s determined hitman memorable) but can be guilty of rushing things at times.