Here Are the Young Men (Eoin Macken) is an adaptation of the Rob Doyle novel of the same name. The film follows Matthew (Dean-Charles Chapman) and his friends, Rez (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) and Kearney (Finn Cole), as they embark on a hedonistic night on the town after graduating from school, beginning by committing acts of vandalism on the Belvo campus as they had always wanted to do and can no longer be expelled for. The trio then take a cocktail of drugs and party the night away, now liberated from the legal and moral constraints of the education system. The next day, they are witnesses to a tragic and deeply upsetting incident, and the rest of the film follows its emotional fallout. 

Or at least, I think that’s what the film wants you to take this moment for: a fundamental moment of change for the three of them, sending each young man off down a different route of transgression. There are certainly hints of this in the cast’s sensitive performances (with Finn Cole’s increasingly unhinged Kearney certainly being the standout here), but there is not enough time spent with the actual tragedy in question. Ultimately, this focal neglect does more harm than good. Indeed, keeping a formative tragedy to the periphery can be very effective within a story (as any fan of Catcher in the Rye will know), but it doesn’t work here in part because of the persistent and explicit references back to the tragedy despite not having seen it. Instead of seeing the characters haunted by this, we are mostly told that they are. There are a couple of moments that attempt to deal with this ‘haunting’ directly, with some stylised flourishes of an hallucinatory quality, but for the most part, it’s unconvincing and inconsistent. It is not as if the film shies away from showing distressing moments, so the lack of focus on this supposedly formative moment is a little baffling.

Unfortunately, this bafflement is rather indicative of the film as a whole. There is the strange choice to show a character’s trip to America in the format of a surreal chat show, on which he discusses his misadventures there. Perhaps this was also in the book, but in the film it feels like a rather cheap, on-the-nose way of quasi-masking expositional dialogue. Other stylistic choices don’t so much captivate, rather than confuse. Characters flicker on screen and break the fourth wall, and it may look impressive, but how are they really developing?

Additionally, the persistent side-lining of the female characters (Anya Taylor-Joy and Lola Petticrew – completely wasted) is a major issue. The film is absolutely not on the side of the despicable acts perpetrated by the characters. One later scene of attempted sexual assault is very distressing to watch (as it should be), but the film does not focus on the impact of this on the victim of the crime. Instead, we follow how it affects the male leads as bystanders and perpetrators. This is a tiresome and hollow portrait of supposed allyship that shows the danger of indifference, whilst also perpetuating it in its lack of exploration of how sexual assault actually impacts survivors. It presents itself as supportive and sincere, whilst not listening to what really matters in such a situation. 

It feels like its intentions as a critique of toxic masculinity are all in the right place, but the execution comes off just a little too forced. It felt to me like it was an excuse for despicable behaviour, rather than a sensitive probing of the damaging consequences of unchecked misconduct and unaddressed trauma. 

The film isn’t a disaster. The lead performances are very strong (despite a couple of accent wobbles from the Brits): Rez is a self-absorbed nihilist struggling to process his emotions, Kearney is a ticking time bomb, and Matthew is a guy who has no idea what to do with his life, so just follows the crowd. However, Matthew’s character is not only passive, but also rather vapid. Perhaps that is a point about teenage apathy, but for a protagonist this is a problem if the surrounding story isn’t strong enough to offer some emotional heft. And it isn’t. Here Are the Young Men’s myriad issues are complex and troubling, and whilst there is certainly a vital and urgent story about societal and male indifference to toxic masculinity to be told here, this film doesn’t come close to telling it. 

 

Here Are the Young Men is available to watch on digital platforms in Ireland from April 30.