[...]The family at the centre of Conor McPherson's Saltwater consists of a widower and two sons separated by over a decade in age. This time the family is Irish-Italian and running a chip shop in a Dublin seaside town, and the two brothers respond in different ways when faced with taking on the responsibility of dealing with the actions of others.
The older brother, Frank (Peter McDonald) decides to intervene and help his father (Brian Cox), who is heavily in debt to a local bookie and loan shark, Simple Simon (Brendan Gleeson), while the younger brother, Joe (Laurence Kinlan) is unsure how to respond when a rebellious new school friend takes unscrupulous advantage of a girl after a disco. Meanwhile, Frank and Joe's sister (Valerie Spelman) is involved with an arrogant university lecturer (Conor Mullen) who cheats on her with a student (Eva Birthisle) and is planning to humiliate a famous, visiting philosopher.
Saltwater has been adapted by McPherson from his stage play, This Lime Tree Bower, which took the form of three overlapping monologues, and there is not a trace of its stage origins in the assured film he fashions from that material.
There are echoes of McPherson's I Went Down screenplay, not least in the casting of McDonald and Gleeson, about this compelling, astutely observed picture which makes effective use of its out-of-season seaside setting and punctuates the drama with bursts of unexpected humour, most uproariously in a startling vomiting sequence. The cast is uniformly satisfying and includes a young talent well worth noting in Laurence Kinlan, who also features impressively as a friendly Traveller in Country.