First Hit: Moderately interesting film about two lower middle class brothers living in London attempting to make big changes in their lives with disastrous results.
Colin Farrell plays Terry the younger brother to Ian played by Ewan McGregor. The brothers are close and buy a boat together as a way to relive the great times they had sailing together as young boys.
They name the boat Cassandra’s Dream. When they are sailing on the boat they feel really free from their lives of drudgery. Terry is an automobile mechanic working on high-end cars while Ian works in his father’s restaurant. Ian is always scheming on ways to make it big and the latest plan is to get in on the hotel business in California.
Terry is a gambler and during one of his winning streaks makes enough to pay off the boat and also loan Ian some money to impress his new actress girlfriend who thinks Ian is already in hotels in California.
However, Terry loses all his winnings and a whole lot more and is now in trouble with the loan sharks. Ian, desperate to help his brother and keep the façade up with his new girlfriend, steals money from their father’s restaurant. Ian fesses up to his father with promises to pay him back and both brothers see their dreams going up in smoke.
Uncle Howard, played by Tom Wilkinson, is a rich surgeon and comes for a visit. Terry and Ian decide to ask Uncle Howard for some money to help them with their separate desperate situations. However, Uncle Howard has his own situation and tells the boys that he’ll help them out if they help him out.
What Howard asks them to do is way out of their league, but they decide to do it anyway. After the performing the act, Terry is possessed by his conscious that what he has done is wrong and only by telling the police will things be right.
Ian doesn’t feel the same way and so the brothers must work out this problem, and they do on Cassandra’s Dream.
Overall: I felt the pacing of this film was hesitant at times but some of the acting, especially by Colin Farrell, was very good and kept me engaged in this film.