SIX SHOOTER was an infuriating film for me, though judging by the fact that it won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short, I assume I must be in the minority. What I found infuriating was that the film seemed so uneven and didn't seem to stay within a genre. One minute, it was a very sad drama, the next it was a bit of a comedy and back and forth it went. I've seen others describe it as a black comedy but there just wasn't enough to laugh at or enough irony for me to see it as this style film. I like my humor dark, but this just wasn't even funny--it was just rather nihilistic.

The movie begins with a man at the hospital learning that his wife had died. Soon, he's on a train and it seems that several around him have also just lost family. A bizarre and ugly-spirited young man's mother just died and he seems pretty happy about it. A couple is coping with the loss of their baby--and the young guy taunts them about it relentlessly. This all just seemed very cruel and sick. Yet, later in the film, the young guy was talking about heaven and God and this all seemed rather profound--and like it was an entirely different person. To me, to have someone change that much just made little sense and seemed like poor writing. Perhaps they were implying he had a mother issue and hated mothers so much that that is why he was so cruel to the mother on the train, but even this didn't explain him completely. His character just seemed too full of disparities to be realistic.

After a while, there is a lot of violence and death on board the train. This, combined with the dark ending, made for a very dark and unsatisfying film and the bad seemed to leave a much bigger impression on me than the good (such as some excellent acting and a few imaginative scenes).

By the way, this film is part of the CINEMA 16: European Shorts DVD. On this DVD are 16 shorts. Most aren't great, though because it contains THE MAN WITHOUT A HEAD, COPY SHOP, RABBIT and WASP, it's an amazing DVD for lovers of short films and well worth buying. Also, while it lost to SIX SHOOTER, I recommend you try watching OUR TIME IS UP--it was a very, very clever, insightful and funny short that I wish had won instead (it was THAT good).

Your appreciation of SIX SHOOTER, a 30 minute Irish short by IN BRUGES director Martin McDonagh, largely depends on your tolerance for black comedy. I thought myself a fan of it, but after some of the subject matter played for laughs here - including cot death - I'm not so sure. Much of the material left me cold.

Looks-wise, it's certainly a professional production, pitched just right and utilising a moving train carriage as an effective backdrop to the ongoing events. Brendan Gleeson is as good as ever he's been playing Donnelly, a grieving husband encountering some decidedly odd situations on board what should be an uneventful train journey. Unfortunately, much of the film revolves around Ruaidhri Conroy's ne'er-do-well Kid, and I found him so unpleasant and repulsive that much of my enjoyment was taken away as a result.

Still, the acting is strong all around, the use of stark violence is effective and despite everything this feature comes away with a broad dash of Irish charm which works in its favour.

I quite enjoyed the director's two feature films "In Bruges" and "Seven Psychopaths", so why not give his Oscar-winning short film a chance. I watched Wes Anderson's very first film starring the Wilson Brothers recently and was slightly disappointed, not so by this one. Not at all.

It's amazing how McDonagh succeeds to mix grief and dark humor so well and he always seems to get the best out of his actors. Gleeson's is one of the best portrayals of a grieving widower I've ever seen and Rúaidhrí Conroy (who I thought looks like a rougher version of the young William Gregory Lee) delivers an absolutely convincing performance as a stone-cold sociopath. Why oh why hasn't his career taken off so far. He was amazing. Also, I thought the train, although it didn't really contribute anything to the story, worked wonders as a setting. I almost felt like sitting in there watching the bunch.

Being a vegetarian for years I usually tend to feel a bit nauseous when animal violence is depicted graphically on the screen, but I can forgive this one the two scenes (cow, rabbit) because it just fit the story so convincingly. This is nothing short of a must-watch, even if you don't love Gleeson as much as I do.

PS. Your general face was ratty.