User Reviews

WARNING**REVIEW CONTAINS POSSIBLE SPOILERS**After watching Reefer and the Model, I was somewhat bemused. O.K., there was a lot of beautiful Irish countryside and a few potentially interesting characters, but the movie seemed directionless, pointless. What was it trying to say?. It beats me. We appear to have a gang of ex-IRA men scavenging a living on a boat in the Republic of Ireland, one of whom becomes infatuated with a pregnant former prostitute just returned from London. Another member of this gang is a closet homosexual who indulges himself with whatever passing stranger tickles his fancy - or so it would seem, since the respective characters in this film are poorly drawn and allow little room for a sympathetic understanding of their respective situations. Damage to the boat,(their livlihood?), means that this laid-back outfit must plan an armed robbery of a post-office to effect repairs. This is duly executed but the best plans of mice and men can go awry, as is certainly the case here. A high speed chase results in a police car crashing, the robbers surveying the aftermath of the accident and unnecessarily murdering one policeman before making good their escape - an escape that is now doomed following the death of this policeman. In what can only be described as a ridiculous ending, two of this gang are shot by the police at their hiding place, one fatally, whilst the leader tries to rendezvous with their boat, now piloted by the pregnant woman. In what is supposedly meant to be an ambiguous ending, the woman appears to be enduring the pains of childbirth just as the vessel she is commanding enters the open sea, crashing into the rowing boat stolen by the gang leader in his attempt to rendezvous with her. The rowing boat is destroyed and the gang leader cast into the waters, crying in vain for the attentions of this woman, whom we can only surmise is now in the actual process of giving birth to her child. It is a bland moment among many in a quite bland film. Perhaps it was trying to say something new about Irish perceptions of sexuality, perhaps it was endeavouring to point a learned finger at the old concept of life renewing itself in the face of death. Whatever it was trying to say, it didn´t appear to say it very well. And the film-makers geographical sense of Ireland was somewhat lacking. That poor pregnant creature would have made it back to Galway a lot earlier had she not had the misfortune to meet Ian McElhinney and his chums. The Director seemed to suggest that the Republic of Ireland was the size of America with Galway as a kind of El Dorado. Perhaps the woman hadn´t the price of a bus ticket to travel all the way from Dublin to Galway!. In any event, I wish she had gotten the bus. It would have saved me the bother of having to sit through this experience.

I have just dug out my old VHS tape and revisited this movie again. I am a huge fan of the "character based drama" genre and this offbeat tale remains one of my all time fav's! "Reefer and the Model" is set in 1981 on Ireland's picturesque West coast, against the backdrop of "The Troubles" and in particular the hunger strikes that were going on in Northern Ireland at the time... Reefer (a wonderfully restrained performance from the talented and vastly underrated Ian McElhinney) is attracted to "The Model" (The equally impressive Carol Scanlan) and the two immediately strike up a quirky relationship. Reefer runs a trawler with his two friends Badger (Ray McBride) and Spider (Sean Lawlor) however, clearly all is not what it seems. All four protagonists are petty criminals with connections to the IRA, all are out of their depth and time is quickly running out... Yes, the story is quite abstract and there are some confusing plot lines and developments in the film, but to me the slick direction of Joe Comerford, convincing performances from a great cast and the offbeat nature of the story as it moves through to its tragic conclusion makes "Reefer and the Model" well worth the effort. If you want something with recognizable movie stars and a more clear-cut story then fine, go with "Patriot Games" or "The Devils Own" if you want something a wee bit more challenging, then give "Reefer" a go, provided of course you can find it! Such a shame that it has never been released on DVD...