Tragic Irish Romance

So the year was 2004... There I was sitting in my college dorm just flipping through the channels randomly while studying for the next day's classes. I eventually landed on IFC (the Indpendent Film Channel) and stopped... more often than not, that tends to be my reflexive subconscious response to spotting a cute guy on TV (in this case, actor Shawn Hatosy caught my eye). Suffice to say I was intrigued enough to watch the entire film, and was pleasently surprised by the tone and subject matter of the film.

This clip comes from a movie titled Borstal Boy (2000). The movie is an adaptation of the 1958 Borstal Boy autobiographical novel based off the memoirs of famous Irish poet and author Brendan Behan. This movie follows the storyline of Brendan (Shawn Hatosy), at the time an Irish nationalist captured by the British government, as he is forced to adapt to life in a second World War era Borstal (essentially a British reform school). During his time spent at the Borstal, he meets and develops a deep and profound friendship with a boy named Charlie Milwall (Danny Dyer), and is forced to re-examine not only his radical views towards the British government, but to life itself. Charlie eventually leaves the Borstal to go off and join the war effort. The second clip gets into that a little.

I would describe this movie as being very light, yet also tragic and uplifting. The term "pleasant surprise" also comes to mind, yet I suppose that's somewhat cliché. Definitely worth checking out though.

This movie is available on Netflix, or you can buy the DVD.
About the only place where you can download this movie off the net is gay-torrents.