Fireworks Logo

Trailers...

  • Four Girls
  • Possible Days - Trilogy on Tenderness
  • Rita Moreira: chronicles, memories and videotape
  • Me Niego Rotundamente
  • Lo Noy
  • Bombacha
  • Amor Trava
  • Man I Love (The)
  • Loves Company
  • Our Colors Never Fade
  • Mayflies
  • Tracy & Martina: Goin' Out West
  • Test
  • Portrait of the Father at 71
  • What we did in the Shadows
  • Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
  • Movement Song
  • My Name
  • Miss You, Love You
  • Twice the Beast
  • Two Weeks In
  • Umjolo: There Is No Cure
  • Barefoot Boy
  • New Fears Eve
  • In the Grey
  • Black Ball (The)
  • Moss & Freud
  • Social Sin (The)
  • F*ck Drugs
  • Emergency Exit
  • MACDO
  • Proud
  • Tip Toe
  • Club Kid
  • Another Day
  • Hockey Player (The)
  • Punkie
  • Perfect
  • Out of the Woods
  • Manhood

Borstal Boy

Country: UK, Language: English, 93 mins

  • Director: Peter Sheridan
  • Writer: Brendan Behan; Nye Heron
  • Producer: Judy Counihan; Nye Heron

CGiii Comment

Sterilised and, practically, stripped of any real realism - if that's what you have to do for a mainstream release...then, what's the point?!?

It simply plods along and drifts into a plastic tear-jerker.

Sheridan has, possibly, created the most polite juvenile delinquents ever.

The homosexuality is so under-played as to make it insipid - Behan's sexuality is dubious to say the least...but, he was a vile drunk who stretched the truth to unimaginable lengths.

Almost totally implausible - watchable for all the wrong reasons...seeing Dyer being out-acted by Hatosy is uncomfortable viewing.


Trailer...

The(ir) Blurb...

Brendan Behan, a sixteen year-old republican, is going on a bombing mission from Ireland to Liverpool during the second world war. His mission is thwarted when he is apprehended, charged and imprisoned in Borstal, a reform institution for young offenders in East Anglia, England. At Borstal, Brendan is forced to live face-to-face with those he perceived as "the enemy," a confrontation that reveals a deep inner conflict in the young Brendan and forces a self-examination that is both traumatic and revealing. Events take an unexpected turn and Brendan is thrown into a complete spin. In the emotional vortex, he finally faces up to the truth.

Cast & Characters

Shawn Hatosy as Brendan Behan;
Danny Dyer as Charlie Milwall;
Lee Ingleby as Dale;
Robin Laing as Jock;
Eva Birthistle as Liz Joyce;
Michael York as Joyce;
Mark Huberman as Mac;
Jim Byrne as Parson;
Garret Deady as Borstal Boy;
Darren Donohue as Borstal Boy;
Ronnie Drew as Customs Man;
William Fitzpatrick as Borstal Boy;
Luke Griffin as Miller;
Trevor Hanly as Soldier;
Lukas Hassel as Hassel