Review: 'Trespass Against Us' treads familiar fatherly territory

Posted Tuesday, March 7, 2017 at 4:43 PM Central

by John Couture

When you watch Trespass Against Us, you know what you're going to get just by looking at the cover. Two iconic actors literally come to a head over their familial legacy and I could simply watch them act opposite each other all day long.

As I watched the film, I couldn't help but make the obvious comparisons to The Place Beyond the Pines. As a newly minted father myself, I'm particularly sensitive to any films that touch upon what it means to be a father and the "wisdom" that we pass on to our offspring.

While The Place Beyond the Pines dealt more with different approaches across a couple of different fathers, Trespass Against Us traces the effects of legacy on a single family tree. Brendan Gleeson is the patriarch of a criminal family that is trying to ensure that his legacy is maintained by his son, played by Michael Fassbender.

Yes, it's everything that you imagine it would be and then some.

The action comes to a climax when Fassbender's character starts to wish for a different life for his son and he pushes back against his father's criminal element. This idea of rebellion is one that is often explored between fathers and sons, but I don't know if I have seen such a great display of acting chops on both sides of the equation before.

While the film excels in the scenes between these two, it slows down when they aren't both on screen at the same time and this tends to take you out of the film a bit. Also, the tone tends to be all over the place before the final crescendo and if you're not suffering too much from the whiplash, the payoff at the end is well worth the journey.

Trespass Against Us is now available on DVD and Blu-ray and if you enjoy action/crime films that explore the familial dynamics, then you should find this one quite enjoyable. All in all, it's worth watching simply to see the two leads square off over and over again.