Intermission

Director John Crowley and writer Mark O’Rowe energetically juggle the lives of numerous Dubliners as they parallel and intermittently crash into each other in this street-level, violent, dark and chaotic comedy that mixes fractured romances, alliances, betrayals and crime into a dizzying cocktail. The diverse characters here include a vicious street thug (Colin Farrell) who is not beyond slugging women in the face, disgruntled grocery clerks (Cillian Murphy and David Wilmot) who squabble and bond, a girl on the rebound (Kelly Macdonald), her mother (Ger Ryan) and mustachioed sister (Shirley Henderson), a dicey bank manager (Michael McElhatton) and his abandoned wife (Deirdre O’Kane), and a goonish cop (Colm Meaney) obsessed with starring in his own reality-TV show. What may pass as some semblance of a plot is an aborted bank robbery amid a swirl of bed hopping and general havoc. M.H.