{"id":6451,"date":"2026-08-23T11:35:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T11:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=6451"},"modified":"2026-08-23T11:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T11:35:11","slug":"skintown-review-a-breezy-loved-up-drugged-up-guide-to-getting-into-trouble-in-the-troubles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=6451","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Skintown\u2019 Review: A Breezy, Loved-Up, Drugged-Up Guide to Getting Into Trouble in The Troubles"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n<\/p>\n
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\n\tNostalgia, like ecstasy, is a hell of a drug and Kieron J. Walsh\u2019s warm-hearted, hot-headed \u201cSkintown\u201d is buzzing on both. A more polite brother to the \u201cKneecap\u201d boys and a more cautious cousin to those \u201cDerry Girls\u201d still, the Fermanagh-set friendship comedy sends fizzy, sweetly chemical energy coursing through a rave-romanticizing riff on the coming-of-age formula. The story may not be exactly new, but its bittersweet life lessons are delivered with such retroactive affection and such eagerness by the appealing cast, that if you\u2019re of a mind to complain, well, in the parlance of the movie, would you ever give over, catch yourself on and wise up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tIt is 1994, in Enniskillen, unflatteringly dubbed \u201cSkintown\u201d by its denizens and famous for \u201ca lake, an old castle and an IRA bomb that killed 11 civilians in 1987.\u201d Vinny (Jack Rowan) wants nothing more than to get the hell out. Partly, that\u2019s due to the omnipresent dangers of an intractable conflict that has been ongoing since before he was born. (Vinny is 23, though his characterization here skews younger.) But really his disillusion with Skintown is an independence struggle of a more personal kind \u2014 one recognisable to anybody who remembers their jaundiced familiarity with their childhood hometown starting to curdle into contempt as adulthood beckoned.\u00a0When Vinny strikes up an unlikely friendship with Wilson (Hope Ipoku Jr.) a Black squaddie from Manchester who\u2019s been deployed to serve in the universally despised British military patrols, they bond when he realises that for Wilson, joining the army was his escape from the place he<\/em> grew up in.<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, as soon as Vinny gets the money together, he\u2019s resolved to leave, although there are things he\u2019ll miss: his supportive, hardworking paramedic mum (Roisin Gallagher); his peppy unrequited crush Eileen (Jamie Lee O\u2019Donnell); and most of all, his best mate Jonty (Chris Walley), a shell-suited, high-spirited raver just out to have a good time. Vinny and Jonty are as thick as the thieves they eventually, inadvertently become when they\u2019re pressganged into a caper involving a load of ecstasy stolen from the UVF (a loyalist paramilitary group).<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the bright side, though \u2014 and DP Ruairi O\u2019Brien\u2019s pleasant images make most everything bright even when, among sparse crowds and street scenes that feel rigidly dressed to the camera, the limits of the budget show \u2014 if they manage to sell the drugs and survive, they stand to make quite a bit of cash. More, anyway, than they could hope to score from their part-time jobs at the neighborhood pizzeria, whose oleaginous owner, splendidly named Tony Pepperoni (Michael Smiley), insists on serving his pizzas with a side of Peking ribs because, he contends, \u201cthe Irish aren\u2019t ready for pizza on its own. They need a wee side of ribs to wean them off the Chinese.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tThat kind of authentically eccentric observation feels lifted directly from experience, and the pacy screenplay, adapted by Enniskillen native Ciar\u00e1n McMenamin from his 2018 novel, abounds in such flourishes. As a ritual, the whole pub greets the TV newsreader (modelled on BBC institution Moira Stuart) like an old friend every time she begins her report with \u201cGood evening.\u201d \u201cBody of Christ,\u201d blasphemes Jonty benignly, handing out pills at a rave like they\u2019re communion wafers. And, it being marching season, everyone is used to maneuvering around the Orangemen who take to parading down the main street at the drop of a bowler hat. \u201cThey\u2019d want to get a move on if they\u2019re planning on stopping outside every<\/em> Catholic pub,\u201d sighs barmaid Chalky (Tara Lynn O\u2019Neill) resignedly. <\/p>\n

\n\tAh yes, the Catholics. The Protestants. The Republicans. The Unionists. The IRA, the UVF, the UDA, the INLA, the RUC, the Brits and the Battle of the Boyne \u2014 Vinny\u2019s rather unnecessary voiceover namechecks them all, with more or less equal disparagement. While he and his mates are from a Catholic\/Republican background, \u201cSkintown\u201d is careful not to overtly assign blame to one side and virtue to the other. Instead, most of its rancor is directed without sectarian bias, at the politician class. The brief, incredulous euphoria that follows the fateful announcement of an IRA ceasefire, is immediately dampened by one barfly (Belfast-born icon Lalor Roddy) observing drily, \u201cIf there\u2019s any conceivable way to fuck this up, those politicians will find it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis careful avoidance of any alienating perspective, and its streak of sentimentality make \u201cSkintown\u201d a more timid proposition than, say, \u201cKneecap,\u201d even as it ramps up to an inevitable tragedy to undercut the bursts of MDMA-infused idealism elsewhere. But it also serves up a gently pointed reminder that for all the region was internationally synonymous with terrorism, reprisal and violent death, most of its inhabitants were ordinary people just going about the humdrum business of everyday life. And being Northern Irish, they did it with an indomitable sense of humor. So don\u2019t come to \u201cSkintown\u201d for trenchant political commentary; come for the slangy jokes, the \u201990s kitsch and the precise evocation of the love\/hate relationship so many of us Irish have with the place that, however begrudgingly, we call home.<\/p>\n

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\n

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\t\t\u2018Skintown\u2019 Review: A Breezy, Loved-Up, Drugged-Up Guide to Getting Into Trouble in The Troubles<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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\t\tReviewed online, Aug. 20, 2026. In Edinburgh Film Festival (Competition). Running time: 98 MIN.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

    \n
  • \nProduction:<\/strong>
    \n(Ireland-U.K.) A F\u00eds \u00c9ireann\/Screen Ireland, Northern Ireland Screen, Visit Films in association with TPC, RT\u00c9, BBC NI, Coimisi\u00fan Na Me\u00e1n presentation of a Keeper Pictures, Cyprus Avenue Films production. (World sales: Visit Films, New York.) Producers: Yvonne Donohoe, Brendan J. Byrne. Executive producers: Katie Holly, Kieron J. Walsh. Co-producer: Stacey Quigley.\t\t\t<\/li>\n
  • \nCrew:<\/strong>
    \nDirector: Kieron J. Walsh. Screenplay: Ciar\u00e1n McMenamin, based on his novel. Camera: Ruairi O\u2019Brien. Editor: John O\u2019Connor. Music: Kormac.\t\t\t<\/li>\n
  • \nWith:<\/strong>
    \nJack Rowan, Chris Walley, Jamie Lee O\u2019Donnell, Hope Ikpoku Jr., Martin McCann, Gerard Jordan, Tara Lynne O\u2019Neill, Lalor Roddy, Roisin Gallagher, Michael Smiley. \t\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As the IRA calls its 1994 ceasefire, two friends dream of escaping Northern Ireland in Kieron J. 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