The film is set in Ireland in the early 1960s in the small town of
Clones. Francie Brady is a 12-year-old boy whose imagination is fuelled by
television -
aliens,
communists, the
Atomic Age. When his mother suffers a
nervous breakdown and ultimately commits suicide, he is left in the care of his father, an emotionally distant and ill-tempered
alcoholic. Francie spends most of his time with his best friend Joe Purcell talking about "gangsters, cowboys and Indians,
comic-book monsters and the early-1960s threat of
nuclear annihilation." However, when Francie's growing conflict with another boy, Phillip Nugent, and his mother begins to go too far, he ends up at
reform school. Here, he is
molested by Father Sullivan, and finds solace only in his fantasies about a foul-mouthed
Virgin Mary. He returns home to find Joe has outgrown him and befriended Phillip Nugent. Before long, his father has drunk himself to death. Faced with being left completely alone in the world, Francie loses his grip on reality and lashes out with uncontrollable brutality, which shocks his provincial hometown. ==Cast==