
Neil Jordan directed this adaptation of Patrick Mc Cabe's novel about a boy's struggles with violence & mental illness Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens) is a young boy growing up in Dublin in the early 1960s where his life is dominated by his active imagination & his best friend Joe (Alan Boyle) But beneath this benign surface lurks a troubled soul; his father (Stephen Rea) is an embittered alcoholic his mother (Aisling O' Sullivan) is emotionally unstable & periodically ends up in the local mental hospital (or as she calls it the garage because it's where they take you when you break down) & their next-door neighbour Mrs Nugent (Fiona Shaw) often rants that the Bradys are pigs not fit to live with For all their troubles Francie fiercely loves his parents & he can't abide Mrs Nugent's insults But his playful childhood pranks begin to advance into more destructive & menacing behaviour which leads him to his own stay in 'the garage' Branded a lunatic by the community & shorn of his only close friendship when Joe takes up with Mrs Nugent's son Francie soon reaches the point of collapse With nowhere to go Francie takes an especially awful job as a butcher's assistant & his overactive imagination goes into overdrive flooding his mind with images of alien takeover atomic apocalypse & the Virgin Mary (Sinead O' Connor) that lead him further down the path toward shocking acts of violence