CALM WITH HORSES

finding a WAY out of violence

This indie drama is powered by raw performances and a brutal left hook. It follows Douglas ‘Arm’ Armstrong (Cosmo Jarvis from Persuasion, above, right, with Barry Keoghan), a fierce boxer in his youth who now works as a mob enforcer in rural Ireland. Like so many on-screen boxers before him, there’s a vulnerability and sadness to Arm, who despite having the look of a brute is in fact yearning for more than the life that has been carved out for him. He has a child with his ex (Deceit’s Niamh Algar), a fiveyear-old called Jack, who has autism. It’s Arm’s desperation to get one thing right in his life, and be a good father to Jack, that powers him through as he loses his taste for violence.