Richard Keaney’s Joey Had Never Been Out of the City is a slickly produced short about trust. Ken Armstrong’s Samuel Beckett-like lyricism lends itself splendidly in his screenplay about a robbery gone awry.
Joey (Liam Gaffney) and Wayne (Patrick Austin) are fleeing Dublin with a can filled to the brim with cash. But, as all has not gone according to plan, the duo, a little like Steve Buscemi in Fargo, is forced to duck into the bleak and barren countryside to bury the loot.
Along the journey, Joey passionately attempts to regale Wayne with a story he knows about a man who trapped a leprechaun, and in doing so, made the creature trade the location of its pot of gold for freedom.
Liam Gaffney as Joey, traveling in silence and solitude after the fallout in Joey Had Never Been Out of the City
“…forced to duck into the bleak and barren countryside to bury the loot…”
The myth and the real world seem destined to collide with Joey. Apparently, after a period of incarceration, tracks down Wayne, having returned to the site of their buried treasure, only to discover…there is nothing there.
Gaffney and Austin play strange contemporary versions of Vladimir and Estragon, with Joey Had Never Been Out of the City succeeding as a kind of modern-day Waiting for Godot meets Fargo. Brief as it is, this short has definite resonance, plus, it’s hard not to make a complementary comparison with the work of the magnificent Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin).
"…a slickly produced short about trust."
