At The Movies with James Phelan: Spilt Milk 

Review: Spilt Milk 

Straight out the gate, I’ve got to confess – I’m a sucker for a detective story. In both book and film form. I’m attracted to the genre in my own writing. So, when I hear there’s an Irish film coming out about a kid detective, I’m already fully onboard.

Set in the 1980’s in Dublin in an area where the working classes don’t have any work, ‘Spilt Milk’ is an accomplished and atmospheric feature that belies its budget level to deliver a film that punches well above its weight.

Bobby O'Brien (Cillian Sullivan) is an 11-year-old enlivening his own life with a vivid imagination powered by the American detective shows playing on his family’s telly. Chief among these inspirations is Billy’s biggest idol – Kojak. The fictional lolly sucking investigator (immortalised by Telly Savalas) has such a profound impact on Bobby’s world view that the young kid sees and seeks crime in every corner of his life.

At first, the transgressions that Bobby wants to solve are totally age appropriate. Within his school, he volunteers to find missing toys for his classmates. Or uncover where their pocket money is disappearing to. And it’s the same story at home where a lost ring is spun into a vast conspiracy that only Bobby and his often-reluctant sidekick Nell can expose. 

However, these fantasies are revealed as protective creations that the boy uses to inure himself from the harsh realities surrounding him.

Things start to hit close to home when Bobby’s beloved telly is stolen from the family flat. Bobby can’t imagine anything much worse than this seismic gap in his life but then, Bobby’s older brother Oisin goes missing. 

Now, Bobby has skin in the game and he has never had such a serious quest before. He must find his brother. 

People around his estate are lying to him but Bobby sets out to find Oisin armed only with tenacity and one small clue…..

By following the harrowing journey of his brother, Bobby literally has to drop the detective act that is shielding him from the dark spectre of drug addiction that has descended on his inner-city community. Hence the final act of a film that started light and sunny depicts the end of innocence for Bobby as the playful concerns of childhood are put aside in a bid to save his sibling and reunite his family.

So, this film shifts the goalposts for the audience as it goes along. And these are perfectly legit decisions by writer Cara Loftus and director Brian Durnin. Indeed, if they had made a film in this era without addressing the ravages of addiction, accusations of glossing over the heroin epidemic may have been levelled. They walk the tightrope smartly. 

Elsewhere, the director of photography Cathal Watters captures Dublin with an imaginative eye, giving the film heft and considerable scale on what I imagine was a pretty shoestring budget.

With child performances at the very centre of the piece, the filmmakers unearth two diamonds in Cillian Sullivan and Naoise Kelly. They are cute without being cutesy. Knowing without being know-alls. 

Overall, the film is a captivating time capsule that is high on emotion and low on sentimental excess. It also plays out in a brisk hour and a half. And if you read this column last week, you will know that ticks a major box for me.

So, as well as showing Hollywood how to do it, ‘Spilt Milk’ signposts a direction that Irish film should take more often. Family entertainment without pandering or padding. This is a film worth seeking out. And filmmakers worth backing.