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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com essential video:
You can't write off Francie Brady, apple-cheeked hero of The Butcher Boy, as a bad seed and have done with him. In Irish director Neil Jordan's often-surreal fairy tales, bad seeds grow the fruit of subversive knowledge: A master of blending the everyday with the truly mad and wonderfully weird, Jordan loves to encourage charismatic anarchists--driven by amoral energy and imagination--to attack the status quo with extreme prejudice. Exuberant Francie (Eamonn Owens, making a splendid debut) is a thorn in the side of rural Irish repression and hypocrisy. Better to call this smart, too-sensitive brat an ambulatory Rorschach, an uncensored billboard of his disapproving society's uglier truths and fears. A nonstop standup comedian ('And the Francie Brady Not a Bad Bastard Anymore Award goes to--Great God, I think it's Francie Brady!'), he projects fantasies of '60s cold war paranoia (atomic warfare leaves his village a graveyard of charred pigs), American 'cowboys and Indians' pop culture, and Catholic Madonna worship (Sinead O'Connor appears as an earthy Virgin Mary). But Francie's rich fantasy life is no match for reality's 'slings and arrows': His abusive da (Stephen Rea) pickles himself in drink, his fragile mother edges closer to suicide, 'blood brother' Joe turns Judas, and a punitive stint at a Catholic reformatory ends with our Gaelic Holden Caulfield tricked out in girlish bonnet and ruffles, plaything of an addled old priest (Milo O'Shea). No wonder Francie's ultimately driven to exorcize his own Wicked Witch of the West. (He sees Mrs. Nugent (Fiona Shaw), self-righteous pillar of a callous community, as the cause of his cursed life.) Laced with tragedy and hilarity, great beauty and horror, Jordan's adaptation of the Patrick McCabe bestseller mutates the adventures of Francie Brady--psychotic killer, performance artist, and purest innocent--into a sort of saint's life. --Kathleen Murphy
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Black Comedy Chronicles a Boy's Descent into Psychosis
I had no idea what I was getting into when I watched this. Heartbreaking, darkly comic, but undeniably realistic, this film shows a fairly resourceful preteen boy's coping skills cruelly overcome by his family's misery and his best friend's abandonment. Francie's desperate fantasies that his friend Joe still cares about him, and his quickly-masked moments of devastation when those fantasies are crushed, are beautifully acted by young Eamonn Owens (and beautifully directed by Neil Jordan). Although ... Read More
Rating:  - I see great things in store for young, and talented Eamonn Owens
he just bursts off the screen. It's been a long, long, time since I've experienced such terrific acting for one so young. He reminds me of Mickey Rooney, in "A Mid-Summers Nite Dream", he was also so young but he also bursts off the screen. Even though the age between the two actors is great young Owen is almost a re-incarnation of Rooney (even though Rooney is still alive). My only complaint is the thick brogue is sometimes hard to follow. But, who cares, young Eamonn stole this movie.
Rating:  - I may have erred but I left before I got any older
I don't know. I gave this one 35 minutes before I shut it off in frustration. From the plot description, I imagine it was gonna go somewhere I would have enjoyed but I was getting ticked that it was taking so long for anything to happen. Anything! I imagine I may have cheated myself from some entertaining twistivities but don't make me wait more than a half hour to even warm up! I mean, NOTHING was happening of interest! I'm a deep thinker. I can appreciate elaborate plots, the necessary setup, the look ... Read More
Rating: - A well-directed, well-acted, repulsive, unredeemed film
This film is well-done from every technical viewpoint. The direction is good, the acting is solid, the writing is crisp, the cinematography is near perfect.
The problem is the subject matter--children behaving very, very badly, and the reasons why--which is at first annoying, then repellent, and finally reaches the point of complete savagery. It's not "dark"; it's self-indulgently nihilistic and brutal. We're supposed to understand and even empathize with the main character's descent into ... Read More
Rating:  - The Butcher Boy
Based on the novel by Patrick McCabe, "Butcher Boy" is the blackest of black comedies, and unlike anything you've seen. Stephen Rea is effective as always playing Francie's drunken father, but it's Eamonn Owens's stunning portrayal of one very troubled kid that stays with you. (Owens was plucked out of 2,000 child actors to assume the role.) Though the film is undeniably bleak, Jordan's magic camera and storytelling gifts transcend this darkest of subjects, creating a strangely hypnotic work of unexpected ... Read More
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