Customer Reviews

The Playboys [VHS]

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

THE PLAYBOYS stars Albert Finney, Aiden Quinn and Robin Wright. I saw the film in the theatre several years ago and have been waiting to buy the DVD. I don't remember the characters names, but the gist of the story is this: Robin Wright plays a young woman living in a small village in Ireland. She is the mother of an adorable out-of-wedlock baby. She will not divulge the identity of the baby's father. Albert Finney plays the village constable. He wants to marry Wright, but she refuses to marry him or to identify her child's father. Many folks in the village feel Wright ought to marry the good cop.

One day, a very small traveling carnival arrives in the village. The carnival is so small all the members of the troupe perform multiple tasks. One of the troupe is played by Aiden Quinn. Quinn has a nifty motorcycle which he spins round and round the village green to impress Wright. Finney disapproves of Quinn's interest in Wright. When the carnival leaves the village, Quinn asks Wright to ride aways with him on his motorbike. Will she, should she? You'll have to watch the film to find out whether she chooses the good cop or the dashing young man, and you will discover the identity of the baby's father by the end of the film.

Give this one a second chance. First time through, I thought plot was thin and weak. Second time through I picked up on the nuances of personal relationships in a rural Irish village, as intertwined as a Celtic knot. Good acting all around - even the stoic children do their part. When traveling players come to town, secrets are revealed and personalities clash, but in the repressed undercurrents common where small groups must live together. A global story with an Irish accent, told in the days before television homogenized the world.

I know 1992 was a long time ago so I'll remind you of the film's nominated for the best picture Oscar that year: "Unforgiven", Clint Eastwood's cowboy movie with a modern edge that won the award, and competitors "The Crying Game", "A Few Good Men", "Howards End" and "Scent of a Woman". This film, "The Playboys", is better than all those films, in my opinion.

A story about secrets, love, fidelity, irony and small town life, "The Playboys" features a stunning performance by Alber Finney and likely the best film work of Aidan Quinn's career as they compete for unwed-but-pregnant Robin Wright, a young woman in a small Irish town that won't disclose the father of her child circa 1957.

While the film is not completely convincing in its representation of the 1950s (who knows what rural Ireland was like then?) it nonetheless remains an involving drama about people, circumstances, personal honor and what is important in life. Shane Connaughton's script plays the competition between the two men -- the standup cop Finney, representing good and irony, against actor-playboy Quinn, representing free spirits --against the overall conservatism and situational condemnation of village residents. The result is good fun and enticing cinema verite.

Filmed in Ireland, "The Playboys" is a wonderful movie that avoids nonsense and sentimentality, ends realistically, and asks the viewer what happenend when it's all over. It is a story on a lesser scale than some of the year's Oscar contenders; yet it stands up to all of them in terms of intelligence, viewer involvement, acting, onsite filming and the fulfilling the vision of its screenwriter. It's a film and story you won't soon forget.

Set in a rural Irish village near the border with Northern Ireland, a young woman (Robin Wright) has a baby, but refuses to say who the father is. The town constable (Albert Finney) and another local landowner vie for her hand in marriage, but she refuses them both. Meanwhile, a troupe of traveling actors (The Playboys) comes to town to do nightly tent shows, and one of the actors (Aiden Quinn) falls in love with Wright, too. She sees him as an escape to Dublin - and maybe (only maybe) falls in love with him, too - and at the end of the movie is seen leaving town with him.

The script is fairly complex (a subplot involving smuggling supplies to the IRA is also part of the proceedings), with a lot going on with the complicated relationships. Wright is seen as the strongest of the characters - fending for herself, knowing what she wants; the males are depicted as being weak: either blindly and hopelessly in love (Finney's desperation is wonderfully portrayed) or simply a means to an end for Wright. The acting is excellent throughout, and the storyline and direction are subtle and interesting. Worth a watch.

This is one of my favorite movies. Aidan Quinn and Robin Wright have wonderful chemistry and if you like romance you can't help but enjoy it. Great date night movie!

It's the 1950s in rural Ireland and lovely, unmarried Tara gives birth to a son. Who's the father? She won't say. But the local police sergeant played by Albert Finney is crazy about her, and more than a little crazy in general. He wants to marry her, but she refuses.
Enter a group of traveling players led by Milo O'Shea and featuring the comley Aidan Quinn and we have all the ingredients of a classic drama. Add in some smuggling, IRA bombs, a bombastic Catholic priest and the brew starts bubbling nicely.
This movie was well-acted and well-written -- the plot has a lot going on; the scenery is lovely; the accents are Irish and Robin Wright is very beautiful. I have just two criticisms: I found the music intrusive and too much like a pastiche of what people think Irish tunes should be. A little more serious, just when you think everything is building to a grand climax, it all kind of peters out to a conventional happy ending. But this is a grand little film to be sure, to be sure.

"The Playboys,"(1992), is a drama/romance/comedy set in a pretty, provincial Irish village of the 1950's. The rural landscape of County Cavan is lovely in this film directed by Gillies MacKinnon, who was born in the urban, unlovely town of Glasgow, Scotland. The clothes, cars and houses look authentic and atmospheric, the dialogue's good, and there's plenty of "crac," that Irish wit.

The movie, which is full of faces familiar from other Irish films, concerns one Tara Maguire, played by the American Robin Wright, who's been delivered of a boy child and refuses to identify his father. (This part was to have been played by Annette Bening, but she turned up pregnant.) Tara's sister Brigid, played by Niamh Cusack, of the well-known Irish theatrical family, is solidly supportive. Adrian Dunbar - has a modern Irish movie ever been made without him ?- plays a local farmer who kills himself, possibly over bad luck with his cattle, possibly because of Tara's refusal to marry him. She's also refusing to marry the older man, the local Constable, Brendan Hegarty, who, we come to learn, actually is the child's father. As played by an adamantine Albert Finney, he really is the spine of this slow, low-key, soft-focus film. For although the village priest is calling Tara out from the pulpit, the locals can't be too hard on her: they've known her from her own birth.

Into this pregnant situation comes a threadbare traveling troupe of actors, led by Freddie, the marvelously talented Milo O'Shea. Tom Casey, played by the American, handsome blue-eyed Aidan Quinn, is the leading man of their performances. Performances that are always eccentric, and frequently downright hilarious. And Tara, who rather unusually for the time and place, insists on marrying for love, sure loves Tom. Tara is portrayed, possibly also rather unusually for the time and place, as a woman who stubbornly insists on standing on her own, and supporting herself and her child: this she ably does by sewing, and by a spot of comic-relief smuggling across the nearby border of Northern Ireland now and then. There's also a subplot about the activities of the Irish Republican Activities that never amounts to much. Despite the fact that a barn is actually burnt down during its course, "The Playboys"is no barn-burner; but it's a charming, romantic little comedy to curl up with of a chilly evening.

A beautiful story, acted similarly. It has a great ring of truth--growing up in the west of Ireland,I well remember the traveling performers who set up their tent on Monday and gave us Shakespeare one night, a murder-mystery the next, followed by a musical, a comedy--all starring the same nine or ten actors. Then on the weekend, gone overnight. Magical. In the movie, Milo O'Shea is a standout as the head of the troupe, the impressario, and Robin Wright-Penn has the Irish accent down pat, as does the besotted (and unrequited) Albert Finney At the wise insistence of the author of the book on which the film was based, the movie was shot right on the town green of a little town in Cavan. This is a little gem.

The Playboys is a very good drama about village life and how everyone is up on everyone else's business--the typical smalltown denizens. When you have little, it is very important to make sure that those who don't live according to accepted dogmatic rules are kept in close inspection by those who think they don't have secrets to hide.

Robin Wright plays the put-upon unwed mother with strength and truth. Aidan Quinn, the traveling player who is smitten, and Albert Finney, the local cop who insists on being the fierce protector, put in their expected great work.

I believe the film is Irish and that makes it quite fine. Foreign work is always of a finer caliber, minding better the ways that people think and react to life's difficulties without chewing on the scenery.

Although this is not a "Great" film, it is a good representation of a time period and life in that time. It shows the drama of life and how people adjust to make that drama tolerable. You have to watch it more than once to see the silliness of the characters, but it is worth the time. Irish cinema is wonderful.