Gold, film review: Slapstick and gags risk getting in the way of a story about love, loss and broken families

Gold (15) Niall Heery, 86 mins Starring: David Wilmot, James Nesbitt, Steven Mackintosh

James Nesbitt and Kerry Condon in 'Gold'

A potentially dark family drama is handled in disconcertingly flippant fashion in the Irish writer-director Niall Heery’s Gold.

David Wilmot (also in ’71) plays hapless drifter Ray, whose father is dying and wants to see his granddaughter. Ray therefore tracks down his ex-partner (Kerry Condon) and teenage daughter (Maisie Williams), who now live with James Nesbitt’s fitness guru Frank.

Heery has an excellent cast, and he elicits some very funny performances from Wilmot as the charming loser, Nesbitt as the PE teacher/stepdad from hell and Williams, of Game of Thrones fame, as the truculent teenager. However, the slapstick and gags risk getting in the way of a story about love, loss and broken families.