‘Skintown’ Review: A Breezy, Loved-Up, Drugged-Up Guide to Getting Into Trouble in The Troubles

Kieron J. Walsh’s warm-hearted, hot-headed “Skintown” is buzzing on both nostalgia and ecstasy, sending fizzy, sweetly chemical energy coursing through a rave-romanticizing riff on the coming-of-age formula.

Set against the backdrop of the 1994 IRA ceasefire, the film follows two friends, Vinny (Jack Rowan) and Wilson (Hope Ikpoku Jr.), as they land a score that could buy their ticket out of Northern Ireland. Vinny wants nothing more than to leave the region, partly due to the omnipresent dangers of an intractable conflict that has been ongoing since before he was born.

However, Vinny’s disillusion with Skintown is an independence struggle of a more personal kind – one recognisable to anybody who remembers their jaundiced familiarity with their childhood hometown starting to curdle into contempt as adulthood beckoned.

When Vinny strikes up an unlikely friendship with Wilson, a Black squaddie from Manchester who’s 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 grew up in.

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’re of a mind to complain, well, in the parlance of the movie, would you ever give over, catch yourself on and wise up.

The pacy screenplay, adapted by Enniskillen native Ciarán McMenamin from his 2018 novel, abounds in such flourishes as authentically eccentric observations, slangy jokes, and ’90s kitsch. The whole pub greets the TV newsreader like an old friend every time she begins her report with “Good evening.” “Body of Christ,” blasphemes Jonty benignly, handing out pills at a rave like they’re communion wafers.

As a ritual, the whole pub greets the TV newsreader like an old friend every time she begins her report with “Good evening.” “Body of Christ,” blasphemes Jonty benignly, handing out pills at a rave like they’re 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.

“They’d want to get a move on if they’re planning on stopping outside every Catholic pub,” sighs barmaid Chalky (Tara Lynn O’Neill) resignedly. Ah 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 – Vinny’s rather unnecessary voiceover namechecks them all, with more or less equal disparagement.

While he and his mates are from a Catholic/Republican background, “Skintown” 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 (Lalor Roddy) observing drily, “If there’s any conceivable way to fuck this up, those politicians will find it.”

This careful avoidance of any alienating perspective, and its streak of sentimentality make “Skintown” a more timid proposition than, say, “Kneecap,” 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’t come to “Skintown” for trenchant political commentary; come for the slangy jokes, the ’90s 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.

“Skintown” is a heartwarming, energetic, and heartfelt exploration of the complexities and nuances of Northern Irish culture, and its coming-of-age story is a relatable and engaging one that will leave you invested in the characters and their struggles.