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2nd April 2025
01:45pm BST

Bring Them Down, the grippingly tense new Irish thriller movie starring Barry Keoghan, is now available to watch at home.
Streaming via the service Mubi, the film is the feature debut of writer-director Christopher Andrews and is set in rural Ireland. It centres around two farming families as they become engulfed in an escalating, dangerous feud.
On one side of the ongoing rivalry is Michael (Christopher Abbott, Wolf Man), a quiet and intense man with a dark history, while on the another is the younger reckless Jack (Keoghan).
Alongside Abbott and Keoghan, the cast of Bring Them Down includes Colm Meaney (The Snapper), Nora-Jane Noone (Brooklyn), Paul Ready (The Terror) and Susan Lynch (Bad Day for the Cut).
We here at JOE were big fans of the Irish thriller, thanks to its intense performances, its terrific sense of mood and its twisty screenplay - which only grows in emotional profundity as it plays out.
"Anchored by a revelatory Christopher Abbott and a typically great Barry Keoghan, Bring Them Down is a hard-hitting Irish thriller boasting brains and brawn," we said at the time of its release.
Others seem to agree, with Bring Them Down racking up several awards and a 90% Rotten Tomatoes score.
Before the movie landed in cinemas in February, JOE interviewed American actor Abbott about the project and how he ended up playing a country farmer in an Ireland-set movie.
"Yeah, I'm surprised too," he joked to us, before adding: "Christopher Andrews, he came to me with the project and yeah, I mean one of the first things I said, I was like: 'Are you sure you don't want to just get someone Irish to do it?'
"Aside from the challenge of doing the language and the accent, which I would call a fun challenge to do, being able to then just step into that world, it's very unique and specific.
"I sort of grabbed onto it just because it's not something you would get asked often to do - get into this sheep farming family, small-town world. It's one of the joys about doing this job - you can kind of just experience or get at least a little taste or glimpse of what that's like."
Abbott also noted that before cameras rolled, he was very concerned about making sure both his Irish accent and the many scenes in which he converses in Irish felt authentic.
Laughing, the actor told JOE: "Of course, it's a concern because I don't want to sound bad. The point is to try to do a good job... I would have had a hard time watching it if I sounded terrible."
As for learning lines in the Irish language, Abbott confirmed it was incredibly difficult, stating:
"I mean the way the Irish language is written is hard to follow. The roots of it are obviously not Latin, not Germanic or whatever. So, it's hard to just read the words.
"I had to learn everything sort of phonetically.
"I couldn't have a conversation in it now, this time past, but I remember some of my lines and I remember what they mean.
"But that's all that's important really, to at least just know what I'm talking about and know what I'm saying in the context of this movie."
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Bring Them Down is streaming on Mubi right now.
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