Run & Jump (2014)

I love this movie so much

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

It's hard to tell what the right choices are in life. It's even harder if someone close to you has an illness, how you should react to that. And if there is also an outside force trying to come in from the outside (whatever the original motives are), that it gets even tougher. So decisions are being made that are not only rational.But while this drama seems to be concentrating on an illness, it is giving us human beings, who just are reacting to each other and the circumstances they find themselves in. This either will appeal to you right away or you will dislike it. Good thing is, you can tell early on if this drama is something you want to watch or not

I suppose it's evil to criticize a film about the recovery of a stroke victim, but this isn't a documentary, and the primary focus of the movie is instead about the relationship that evolves between the academic monitoring Conor, the stroke victim, and Conor's wife. And it was all so slow and uneventful. I came very close to shutting it off after about an hour, but I have this weird movie code of trying to see films all the way through, if I can, no matter how bad it might be. I realize that the reviews thus far have been overwhelmingly positive. All I can say is that according to IMDb, it played in America for one week only on two screens before going to DVD. That's it, and it didn't exactly break any box office records during that engagement as well. So that, hopefully, should tell you something about this film. I see I'm the first American commenting on this movie...we'll see what others think.

An Irish family welcome home Conor, the husband and father who has recently suffered a life changing stroke. In tow is an American psychologist who is studying Conor's progress as he tries to settle back into the family life. It's not long before the American becomes the father figure himself and also begins to veer towards a deeper relationship with Vanetia, the wife.For a film that clocks in at just over 1 hour 40 minutes this still felt rather long winded in places. Some of the dramatic scenes work well and the performances are perfectly OK, Edward MacLiam as Conor in particular impressing whereas Maxine Peake as his free-spirited wife struggles badly with the Irish accent which doesn't help.It seems however there is too much thrown into the pot and in the end it becomes unnecessarily convoluted - we have the blossoming relationship between the wife and the psychologist, the struggles of the husband and wife, the son facing up to homosexuality, the suspicious father-in-law, the sister who's taken a shine to the American and so on. All this leaves it rather disjointed and had it just centred on the 3 way adult relationship dynamic it would've made for a much stronger film.Not all bad but something of a mixed bag.

Before I saw this movie, I had a small idea as to what the main storyline was about. I wondered how the story would be captured on film. It exceeded all my expectations and managed to deliver far beyond that. It is such a sensitive portrayal of a situation. I liked the way the film was peppered with humour and it showed how people can find humour or use humour to deal with the potential sadness of a situation. It's quintessentially Irish without being twee or 'oirish'! The acting is superb also. I often think that a good sign of a movie is one that leaves an impression and becomes the topic of conversation for days/weeks afterwards. This movie made that great impression and I look forward to seeing it again soon.