# Everlasting Piece, An (2000)

### reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten

    AN EVERLASTING PIECE

     Reviewed by Harvey Karten
     DreamWorks Pictures/ Bayahibe Films
     Director: Barry Levinson
     Writer:  Barry McEvoy
     Cast: Barry McEvoy, Brian F. O'Byrne, Anna Friel, Billy
    Connolly

All attempts at comedy seem to have been swept under the rug in a movie that at best could be called intermittently whimsical, and deserving at least some attention for the way it ridicules the pretensions of the British forces in Belfast and the I.R.A. alike. With a script by Barry McEvoy which is oosely based on the character of his father, "An Everlasting Piece" is directed by Barry Levinson ("Rain Man," "Diner") whose lenser, Seamus Deasy, as set up his camera in the Ardmore studio in Dublin and on location in Dublin and Belfast.

Inspired by the tired concept that political battles aside, friendship and humanity are all that matters, "An Everlasting Piece" is a small film that conveys the spirit of Kevin Allen's "The Big Tease" with virtually none of that film's pizazz, wit or charm. Levinson opens the picture in a hospital for the emotionally disturbed in which patients report for haircuts to barber Colm (Barry McEvoy)--who got his job through his nurse girl friend Bronagh (Anna Friel)--and his fellow cutter, George (Brian F. O'Byrne). Though George is Protestant and unassuming while Colm is Catholic and cocky, they recite lines of poetry to each other and get along just fine. When Colm learns of a list of balding men maintained by the hospital's most aggressive patient, known as The Scalper (Billy Connolly)--because he literally lifted scalps from four who'd have preferred not to get their hair cut--he and his pal George manage to obtain the register and go into the hairpiece business. Believing that they would have absolutely no competition throughout Northern Ireland, they are dismayed to discover that another firm, Toupee or Not Toupee, is doing business in their town. A large potential customer will award a contract to the firm that sells the most rugs by midnight of Christmas Eve, leading Colm and George aggressively to seek out the glabrous of their politically unstable town.

The whimsy comes from attempts at Saturday Night Live- type sketches as George and Colm gain acceptance by their first customer (who refuses to pay because "possession is nine point of the law"), a large number of British troops who have become bald because of the stress of their hair-raising job, and most notable of all by a balding member of the I.R.A. (Colum Convey) who cannot make up his mind whether to shoot the two as spies or give them some business.

The concept of an I.R.A. man looking as vicious as a Klanman with head covered by a ski mask but as meek as a shorn lamb during the day may have struck some in the film business as bizzare and amusing, but comes across as tired as it is humorless. Even the usually rollicking Billy Connolly, so convincing as the queen's regular date in "Mrs. Brown" and so hilarious during his appearances on Letterman, settles in for a role as a looney tunes with which he is unable to do a thing. If Toupee or Not Toupee is more than a rhetorical question, my advice if you must choose your movies carefully is not toupee.

Rated R. Running time: 105 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com

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