Critics reviews

In the Land of Saints and Sinners is one long succession of every cliché in the book, served with gusto and jollity by an able team of creators both behind and in front of the camera, knowing full well what they’re doing, doing it well and enjoying the ride. On the right night, and if they’re in the right mood, it may well rub off on the audience.

The problem with a film like Saints And Sinners is that the McDonagh brothers have a lock on the land with films like The Guard or Banshees of Inisherin. If you try to play it straight, as Robert Lorenz does with a mythic Neeson silhouetted against the peat bog, audiences look for the joke... [The film follows] a much-loved template though, and Kerry Condon gets stuck into her role... with considerable gusto: there will be blood, and there will be viewers too for Neeson’s return to Irish film-making.

Overwritten [and] overripe... [The Troubles'] political conflict is merely background wallpaper for a formulaic faux-Western in the predictable script written by Mark Michael McNally and Terry Loane, which loads up on contrivances and undercuts its attempts at realism with movie-ish hokum.