
How do you survive in modern day, small town Ireland, as a good priest. That’s the rather simple question at the centre of Calvary. In a world where the Catholic church has been hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons, we follow the last week of Father James Lavelle, (Brendon Gleeson) who in the opening scene of the film is told in the confessional booth that he is going to be murdered next Sunday. He knows who has made the threat, but we and the rest of the characters in the film don’t, as even in these circumstances he honours the rules of the confessional booth. As director John Michael McDonagh has said, it’s a who will do it, rather that a who done it.

