The Young Offenders

Production

The film is based on the seizure of 1.5 tonnes of cocaine off the Irish coast near Mizen Head in 2007. The film was shot in Cork and along the Wild Atlantic Way.

Plot

Best friends Conor and Jack are two teenagers from Cork who dress the same, act the same, and even have the same weak moustaches. Jock is a notorious bicycle thief who plays a daily game of cat-and-mouse with the bike-theft-obsessed police sergeant Healy. Conor is the son of a single mother, Mairead, who works for a fishmonger at an indoor food market. When a drug-trafficking boat capsizes off the coast west of County Cork, leading to the seizure of 61 bales of cocaine, each worth €7 million, word gets out that there is a bale missing.

Conor and Jock steal two bikes and go on a road trip, hoping to find the missing bale, which they can sell and therefore escape their troubled home lives. Unfortunately for them, Healy is in hot pursuit. The boys soon find the bale of cocaine, stealing it from a disabled drug dealer named Ray, but they end up losing it on the way back to Cork. Ray later tracks them down, steals a nail gun from a hardware store, and angrily invades Conor's home just as Healy also catches them. However, Healy clears things up and arrests Ray. Jock is put into foster care with Conor and his mother due to his abusive upbringing.

Release

The Young Offenders premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh on 8 July 2016, and won Best Irish Feature Film at the festival. It became the fastest Irish film to break the €1 million mark at the Irish box office in 2016. Carnaby Sales and Distribution has acquired the international sales rights to the film, while a deal with Vertigo Releasing will see the film released in the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. The film had its U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas on 23 September 2016, where it won a Special Mention for Best Comedy Debut.

Reception

The Irish Examiner scored it 4/5, saying "huge potential for that rare breakout hit which also attains a cultish following with endlessly quotable one liners". The Irish Times named it as one of the highlights of the Galway Film Fleadh, saying that Walley and Murphy are "brilliant as track-suited layabouts who, though lazy, impulsive and ignorant, remain endlessly lovable throughout". After its U.S. premiere, The Austin Chronicle called the film "a charming return for Irish comedy".