Michael Lamb (Liam Neeson) is an idealistic young Brother in a west of Ireland reformatory, ill at ease with the brutal regime under which the young inmates live. The recent death of his father and his growing anger at the mistreatment of one of the boys (Hugh O’Conor) prompts him to take dramatic action; cash in his inheritance and flee with the boy to England.

With this unconventional relationship between a naïve young cleric and a troubled child at its core, the film is vivid and unsettling – and unlikely to have been made at a later stage when scandals of clerical abuse were rife – with Neeson in his first lead film role and a remarkable debut for Hugh O’Conor (four years before his Oscar nomination for My Left Foot).

(Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn.)