8.5 Hours

Breaking Glass Pictures

R1 DVD

We need more films from Ireland. 8.5 Hours is a micro-budget film that packs a tense plot and brilliant acting. I am amazed that Director Brian Lally managed to produce such a film without the facilities you would expect from a large studio.

The film is set towards the end of the boom time in Ireland, when the so-called Celtic Tiger is on the verge of its monumental collapse. Everyone was out to get what they could and the grand lifestyle seemed set to go on forever for those strong enough to carve out their share. The scene is a small software company who has successfully taken advantage of the boom but is now tightening its belt. Meanwhile the staff, blissfully unaware, have their own problems.

Tony, a serial womaniser, is being stalked by the mother of a girl he got pregnant last year. The girl committed suicide and her mother thinks Tony should pay for it. She haunts him day and night but she is completely unbalanced and Tony’s misdeeds are brought home to him in an astonishing way.

Frank, the team leader, finds his wife is having an affair with his best friend David. Marriage and stability means everything to him and he is totally lost in his sense of betrayal. Can he forgive his wife and try to restart his life?

Eoin is the firm’s main programmer and is about to be married to a girl he loves dearly. He is also having a gay relationship with Simon, a man he met at a party. Simon is the manager of the firm and has faced him with the question “do you prefer men or women?” Eoin is shattered. What does he tell his wedding-obsessed fiancée?

Rachel is a young woman who wants the good life that is always just out of her reach. She has just had a painful breakup with her boyfriend and is desperate to buy a top-end apartment close to her work. It is beyond her means but if she can get a decent raise from Simon she can just afford the mortgage. She knows of his homosexual relationship with Eoin and blackmails her way to the pay rise. Even Rachel, though, falls prey to a predatory real estate salesman and she begins to wonder if the sacrifice is worth the humiliation.

In one eight and a half hour day life has crashed for these people. In the end, has their own greed and selfishness brought them down or can they resurrect their lives? At the start of the film we can sympathise with most of these people, waiting for the axe to fall. By the end of the film we have seen a display of the nastier side of careers and ambitions.

I won’t single out any one actor or actress since they are all superb in their parts. Brian Lally has coaxed great performances from each. I am not usually a fan of human dramas but I found myself being drawn into the characters’ problems and I just couldn’t stop watching as they dragged themselves down.

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