‘Skintown’ Review: A Breezy, Loved-Up, Drugged-Up Guide to Getting Into Trouble in The Troubles
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- "Skintown" is a friendship comedy directed by Kieron J. Walsh and set in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh in 1994, with a screenplay adapted by Enniskillen native Ciarán McMenamin from his 2018 novel.
- Vinny (Jack Rowan), a 23-year-old Catholic desperate to leave town, strikes up an unlikely friendship with Wilson (Hope Ipoku Jr.), a Black British soldier from Manchester deployed on local patrols, bonding over their shared desire to escape the places they grew up.
- Vinny and his shell-suited best friend Jonty (Chris Walley) are pressganged into selling a haul of ecstasy stolen from the UVF, a loyalist paramilitary group — a caper that threatens their lives but promises more cash than their part-time gig at pizzeria owner Tony Pepperoni's shop.
- The film deliberately sidesteps sectarian blame, directing its rancor at the political class: when an IRA ceasefire is announced, barfly Lalor Roddy immediately observes that "if there's any conceivable way to fuck this up, those politicians will find it."
- The review positions "Skintown" as a more polite, less politically charged cousin to "Kneecap" and a more cautious companion to "Derry Girls," trading trenchant commentary for slangy jokes, '90s kitsch, and a bittersweet love letter to the Northern Irish hometown experience.
- Enniskillen is unflatteringly nicknamed "Skintown" by its residents and remembered internationally for the 1987 IRA bombing that killed 11 civilians — a backdrop the film honors with affection rather than accusation.
Why it matters: Stacked against the sharper-edged "Kneecap" and "Derry Girls," "Skintown" stakes its identity on a deliberately less sectarian, more sentimental portrait of ordinary Northern Irish life under the late Troubles — making it a nostalgia-tinged, MDMA-buzzed entry in the genre that prioritizes warmth and slangy humor over political sting.
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