Calvary

Brendan Gleeson's rural Irish priest is threatened with death by a revenge-seeking parishioner and given a week to sort out his affairs in this darkly comic drama

Brendan Gleeson's rural Irish priest is threatened with death by a revenge-seeking parishioner and given a week to sort out his affairs in this darkly comic drama.

Gleeson teams up again with writer-director John Michael McDonagh following 2011's wickedly funny The Guard, though the mood here is more sombre as Gleeson's thoroughly decent cleric reflects on sin and death, mercy and forgiveness while the days count down.

However, there is humour, too, especially from the gallery of eccentrics and oddballs who inhabit this wind-whipped Sligo parish - including Dylan Moran's sickeningly wealthy financier, Chris O'Dowd's cuckolded butcher and Aiden Gillan's cynical pathologist.

Working out which one of them wants to kill him provides intrigue and suspense.