12/8/17. This was actually a very good portrayal about what alcoholism does to a family. Reynor does a phenomenal job as the young adult son of Toni Collette's alcoholic mother at the verge of dying because of her excesses with drink. This is the first time I have seen such a sensitive portrayal about a son who is torn apart by having to be a caretaker of a parent with a severe substance abuse disorder. You can feel his pain as he dutifully does all he can to try and save his mother from herself. While totally depressing, this movie is worth watching to remind us that when people have a substance use disorder, they are not the only one in pain, it affects EVERYONE around them. Also, a good portrayal of those who provide services to these people and their families.

Review: Although this movie is about a deep subject matter, I still found it quite boring and depressing. The whole tone didn't seem to change from the beginning to end and I didn't really get the moral of the story. Anyway, the film is about a young cab driver called John (Jack Reynor),who looks after his mother, Jean (Toni Collette) who is slowly killing herself with alcohol. One day he comes home from work to find her passed out in bed, so he quickly rushes her to the hospital so they can revive her. The doctors tell him that she is really pushes her addiction to drink, to the limit and that she really needs to get help so he decides to put her in a rehabilitation centre so she can get clean. His best friend, Shane (Will Poulter) decides to leave Dublin but John can't go with him because he looks after his disabled brother, who the mother has disowned, and he's worried about his mum's health. He then gets told that his mother can only stay in the centre for a little while but there is an opening at another home which costs quite a bit of money, so he has to take on a people trafficking job to pay for her stay. After his friend leaves, he's left all on his own to try and pull his family together, with no support from anyone. It's quite an emotional movie with some good acting, especially from Toni Collette but I was left feeling quite depressed. There isn't any major twisted or surprising changes to the storyline but you can't help feeling for poor John who just wants the best for everyone. The emotional scene at the airport, when Shane leaves, shows that John really did want to leave to better his life but he has a good heart and his family come first. Anyway, you do have to be in the right mood to watch this deep drama because it definitely isn't upbeat. Average!

Round-Up: Jack Reynor, 23, must have thought that he had won the lottery when he got a role in the lead alongside Mark Wahlberg in Transformers: Age of Extinction but the movie received mixed reviews and it got panned by a lot of the critics. I personally didn't think it was that bad. He also starred in Vince Vaughn's Delivery Man and he stars in the upcoming Macbeth with Michael Fassbender so this small budget movie definitely hasn't damaged his reputation. The film was written and directed by Gerard Barrett who brought you the highly acclaimed Pilgrim Hill, which I personally haven't seen but at 28 years old, I can honestly say that he didn't do to bad job for his 2nd project. I think that he should have given the storyline a bit more substance, from a entertainment point of view but he put together an emotional movie which some people will be able to relate to. All of the cast was a perfect choice for the subject matter but I did find myself drifting off after a while.

I recommend this movie to people who are into their emotional dramas about a young teenager having to look after his alcoholic mother. 3/10

Both Toni Collette and Jack Reynor excel in their starring roles in this rather dark Irish drama. Collette portrays Jean, who is drinking herself to death, and will need a liver transplant if she can last long enough to see that day come. Reynor plays her loving and devoted son John, who's a hard working Dublin cab driver, but who is also struggling mightily trying to cope with his mother's addiction. After an honest intervention with his mother, she agrees to enter a short term government-run treatment facility, but in order to get her much needed longer term care, John will have to make some painful decisions as to how to get the money to pay for it all.

Thanks to Collette and Reynor's superb performances, along with sharp writing and direction from Irish filmmaker Gerard Barrett, the characters and situations in the film came across to me as quite realistic. As the movie progresses, it lightens up somewhat from its very morose beginnings, and may very well tug at your heartstrings.

All in all, I definitely wasn't thrilled with the film's rather ambiguous ending, but the movie, in general, came across to me as quite heart-felt, and offered a realistic look at the horrific effects of addiction on a person and those around them.