BARBER - Mark Reviews Movies

Barber, Brainstorm Media

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 21, 2023

Private investigator Val Barber (Aidan Gillen) might be accomplished at uncovering secrets because he has lived with one for so long. Then again, the evidence provided by Barber doesn't really suggest that our man is at all good at figuring out what thoughts and deeds people hide.

Here, then, is a mystery that doesn't seem too interested in its central plot, as well as a detective story that suggests an interesting hook for the possible thinking and methods of its private eye but doesn't take advantage of it. Barber, as everyone obviously calls the licensed detective, is a man so caught up in his past, his regrets, and his uncertainty about who he is that even he seems to take the disappearance of a 20-year-old woman as something that he might get around to looking into sooner or later.

One understands the aim of screenwriters Fintan Connolly, who also directed, and Fiona Bergin in presenting the story in this way. It's more a character study than a mystery, as Barber, a bisexual man who has had to cover up and deny his sexuality because of the former laws and continuing prejudices in his native Ireland, finally starts to realize that his homeland and at least some of the people within it have changed. If it weren't for the fact that Barber is also caught up in the case of that missing young woman, the filmmakers might have been on to something.

Instead, neither the character study nor the mystery is given much room to breathe or be explored in this repetitive, languid movie. The main question is whether it's more disappointing as an examination of its protagonist or frustrating as a mystery. Regardless, it's both of those, to be sure.

Barber is mostly a clichéd private investigator, first seen following someone's cheating spouse and taking pictures with a pretty big camera from within a car parked a relatively short distance away. Is the cheater or the detective worse at the task at hand? Does it really matter? After all, it's just a throwaway scene to establish Barber's work and treated as such by the filmmakers. The same goes for Barber's assistant Oxana (Irma Mali), who just keeps her boss—and us, of course—reminded of the fact that he's supposed to be investigating and ends up doing a lot of his job for him off-screen (A surprising number of their conversations end with him asking her to follow or look into somebody), and his contacts in the police force, who seem more than happy to help out even without a scheduled appointment.

Our man is a former cop, forced to resign in disgrace, supposedly for having an affair with a fellow officer at a time when such activity might have been illegal and definitely wouldn't have been tolerated. The script's a bit hazy on time, except that it's set during the COVID-19 pandemic, making for Barber's potentially lengthy absence from official police duty (about 30 years, based on the changes in Ireland's laws) and a particularly awkward moment when our man puts on a face mask to have some harsh, close-quarters words with a dastardly suspect.

In theory, the main plot begins when the missing woman's grandmother (played by Deirdre Donnelly) arrives at Barber's office to hire him to look for her granddaughter. The list of suspects is pretty short, although Barber slowly learns that the young woman has a few potential enemies: a friend she wronged, an ex-boyfriend on whom she cheated, and a stepfather who was frustrated with her and possibly abusive.

That's about all there is to the mystery, apart from a secret that's held back until later and an anticlimactic resolution that basically makes all of our protagonist's actions pointless (and his intuition terrible). For the most part, the story revolves around Barber's relationships with his ex-wife Monica (Helen Behan) and their daughter (played by Aisling Kearns), who's recovering a traumatic brain injury, while also juggling another secret affair, flirting with a suspect's mistress, and putting up with a personal vendetta held by Tony Quinn (Liam Carney), the police detective on the case of the missing woman. Most of these conversations circle around the idea of secrets and lies, which is Barber's business both professionally and personally, and that's about as deep as the notion gets.

Gillen is fine here, as a man wrestling with his identity, while at least coming across as more intelligent than his detective has been written. Barber, though, only makes the convincing case that this character is intriguing on a theoretical level. In practice, he's just going through the motions of a lackluster mystery and some monotonous melodrama.

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