Courier (film, 1988)

Mark works as a courier on a motorcycle in Dublin. Delivering the package comes into the bank. There he meets the sister of his old friend Danny - Collet. They make a date and start dating. As it turns out, Danny is a drug addict and works for a major local drug dealer Val. Dan was implicated in a jewelry store robbery and the police come on him. Detective McGuigan interrogates Dan and realizes that someone is standing behind him. Feeling in danger and suspecting that Danny is working for the police, Val beats up his assistant and deprives one eye.

Mark was himself an addict in the past and is now tied up. He learns about the incident and begins to understand the situation. Soon he finds out that he himself is actually a link in drug trafficking and sends money and heroin. Mark contacts the police, infiltrates the criminal group and tries to enter Val. He learns that a bank robbery is being prepared in which Collet works. Val, feeling that the circle is narrowing, poisoning Dan, adding strychnine to his drugs. Mark is trying to substitute Val, throwing heroin at him before the police come to search for him, but Val gets rid of dirt on time. Val responds by sending a hired assassin, Christie, to Mark. Only thanks to the warning of another courier, Sharon Mark remains alive. The killer does not find Mark but takes Collet hostage. At the last moment, Christi, having changed his mind, lets go of the girl and tells where Val is hiding. In the end, Mark himself is trying to break through to Val and kill him. The criminal is ahead of him and only the policemen who burst into the shelter on time are ahead of Val and kill him.

• Gabriel Byrne - Val
• Patrick O'Loinsay - Mark
• Kite O'Riordan - Collet
• Ian Bennen - McGuigan
• Patrick Bergin - Christie
• Andrew Connolly - Danny

Picture "Courier" the first attempt of director Frank Deasy to shoot a full-length crime thriller in the interior of his hometown of Dublin. Frank Dee and Joey Lee had only one short film in the background. The picture was filmed in conditions of austerity of 16 mm Super-16 film. Rolled copies were printed on the standard film 35 mm. The soundtrack for the tape was partially written by Elvis Costello (under the pseudonym Declan McManus) and was performed by local underground rock bands ^[1] .

The work of Frank Deasy received controversial and generally negative criticism. One of the main reasons was that the young director and screenwriter chose the path of blind imitation of American crime films. Attempting to remove the picture in the characteristic oppressive atmosphere of a big city was doomed to failure. The Dublin of the 1980s was too small a provincial town, which did not look like the background for such a tape at all ^[2] . The experience of joint direction, according to Variety , had dubious consequences, also the critic of the magazine noted a very weakly set scene of the robbery ^[3] . The imitation of Martin Scorsese and his Travis Beekle ^{[4] [5] is} noticeable. The creators of the picture are too carried away with intricate plot twists and did not pay attention to the elaboration of the characters. Young actors did not cope with the task too well, Kite O'Riordan’s performance was especially weak. Karin James ( New York Times ) noted only the participation of Gabriel Byrne, who reliably embodied a negative character ^[6] .

Despite the prevailing negative criticism, the picture had a successful local and international rental ^[3] . Disi, however, was so disappointed with the reviews of his first serious work that he later worked mainly on scripts ^[7] .

• Lance Pettitt. Screening Ireland: Film and Television Representation . - Manchester University Press, 2000. - p. 10. - 320 p. - ISBN 9780719052705 .
• Brian McIlroy. Genre and Cinema: Ireland and Transnationalism . - Routledge, 2012. - p. 11. - 304 p. - ISBN 9781135985059 .