Lenny Abrahamson directed the excellent low budget Dublin film ADAM & PAUL so I was eager to see what this newer production was like. WHAT RICHARD DID isn't as good as that film, although it has some promise and typically realistic performances. The best thing about it is Abrahamson's moody direction, which makes you feel every moment of a torrid and emotional storyline.Unfortunately, WHAT RICHARD DID is also rather slow and lacking in incident. The storyline is a very simple one that drags out a bit, especially in the latter half, and the almost entire lack of an ending is a disappointment in itself. It's a very realistic movie with a solid script, and Jack Reynor does well in a complex leading performance. But after ADAM & PAUL I expected more, and what I got was merely adequate.

The title of this Irish film, What Richard did, contains the excitement right from before you start watching. A neat trick, if you like to create interest, and this does the trick. The script is based on a novel "Bad day in Block Rock" by Kevin Power, which again was inspired by real events.The film invited us into some youngsters every day Irish life, just outside Dublin. 18 year old Richard Karlsen, obviously the main character, is a sympathetic sports (rugby) guy, and what you would reckon a young alpha male. Irish mother, Danish father, living a normal life. Attractive, serious, sportive and a leader of the pack of youngsters. Not a smoker, but still does, occasionally. Well we're introduced to his holiday life during summer. Happy non important days around a guy with has everything going for him. Even gets a girlfriend, which seems like a perfect match to him.Great acting all over. Jack Reynor is amazing, and so is his father, Danish Lars Mikkelsen, as always. They're important, but the whole cast is brilliant, which tells us what a great instructor the director Lenny Abrahamson obviously is. Very true, very realistically told, and as far away from what would have been told in a Hollywood film as possible. A very accurate portrait. The film does a terrific job in introducing us to the persons gallery. Beautifully told, and obviously very important if you want to make a film like this with a real punch.I love realistically told movies like this. We really get inside Richard's feelings, the agonizing pain he suffers from afterwards. The despair. Slowly told, using a lot of silence, this might not be suitable for the one's seeking action. This is a drama which outright tells what a situation like this is, not putting in extra dramatically points to color up the story. I lived the way the camera is used to express thoughts and feeling, showing how it is to be living with guilt.The film has a very important message. It's very easy to do acts under the influence of alcohol. It may ruin lives in just a bad decision. Things like thick force not only have one victim, is has several, and it'll also easily ruin both the innocence, the friendship and at least a part of the future, making marks which never fully mend. There's many living with this pain around, a pain which will always be there.

There is nothing really redeeming in this surprisingly disappointing endeavour. The viewer is subjected to 88 minutes of terrible acting, unimaginative dialogue and inadequate cinematography. One might just say it was a decent enough if a bit amateurish work and leave it at that, but if we are debating whether this is the best Irish movie of the century..well that would really be just sad for Irish cinema.So without revealing any key elements of the (nonexistent) plot, one could point out that achieving absolutely no character depth in a movie that its pace would suggest it pursues nothing else but character development is an achievement in its own right. Add to that the development of a romantic relationship with no use of meaningful dialogue -because that might have served as indicant of personality particularities and as I said there is no reason to think one character is different from any other here- and no intensity of feeling portrayed, yet a relationship that will supposedly prove to hold great significance in the unfolding events.Then there is the unfolding. The director manages to downplay the only event of significance in the movie. It is deliberate but wrong because it wastes the lulling first half and creates the demand for a powerful emotional buildup which needless to say, the lead actor fails to deliver. There this movie dies.What follows is another lulling part, laden as the first with youthful frivolity and promiscuity, which one could claim if juxtaposed with the first and presented as tasteless and lacking, might help this movie prove it had reason to exist. Obviously that opportunity passes by unseen too. Now those who have surmised that this is a work of art and originality I urge to watch Paranoid Park or even Elephant and see the difference between true mastery and sad imitation.

This is as slow moving and as unsatisfying as "Garage", the other Lenny Abrahamson film I have had the misfortune to see. The problem with his films is that there are long scenes with no dialogue, and the story barely moves along. Even the incident which changes the lives of the characters is very slight, when it happens. There has been a lot of praise given for Jack Reynor's performance. I didn't think much of it. He didn't come across that convincingly. He had a breakdown and he cried a lot. So what. If that's considered superb acting, then blow me down with a feather. He doesn't deliver his dialogue with much conviction. There's lots of hugging going on and the word "man" said a lot. The bulk of the cast are most unlikeable. The one actor in it that I thought was quite good was Lars Mikkelsen as the father. I don't think I will ever sit through this film again. It was 87 minutes long and felt like an eternity