"Donnybrook" is one of that undefined subgenre of movies which uses working class misery the same way Michael Bay's movies use explosions. It also has a similar level of depth. It reminded me of "Hick" and the (marginally superior) "Devil All the Time". Those movies were also at pains to confront you with dead-end misery, violence, drug abuse, and desperation.

So "dark" is the movie that it is mostly shot at night and there are even times where you can't see what's going on. The dialogue is also poorly recorded and unintelligible at times.

The plot: an unemployed veteran has two kids and a wife hooked on crystal meth. Her dealer is a psychopath who is in business with his sister, whom he constantly, distressingly mistreats. The veteran wants to enter a bare-knuckle boxing competition where the prize is a hundred grand. He robs a gun shop for the money to enter the competition, and on the way there, after his car breaks down, he assaults a police officer and steals his. Meanwhile, the dealer's sister is forced by him to commit homicide, and after contemplating turning the gun on herself, shoots the dealer, her brother, instead. He survives and follows his sister, who has followed the veteran, and they all end up at the Donnybrook, the boxing competition, where the dealer signs up to fight as well.

This competition is basically a brawl in which nobody bats an eyelid when somebody is killed. It is obviously completely illegal. And yet, before the desperate, psychotic veterans, crystal meth addicted hillbillies and psychopath drifters attempt to tear each other limb from limb, they all take a dignified moment of silence while listening to the national anthem of the country that forgot them. This seems absolutely implausible and was apparently only added so that the filmmaker could highlight the movie's theme of what that country has turned into, what it's done to its citizens, or whatever.

In case we didn't get the point the movie also inexplicably finishes on the site of a Civil War battle, with some dialogue in which the veteran character states the subtext of the movie out loud, in case we didn't get it the first time: yes, this whole movie was set in a pocket of America's heartland that the country itself has forgotten about, and in those circumstances people will do whatever it takes to survive.

At least, I think that's it. The whole movie is very surface level. There is too much plot, too little characterisation, and "themes" that seem tacked on as an afterthought.

A tale of strife in a rural part of America, where an ex-marine does what he can only do to survive and care for his family, it parallels with the life of a crazed family of Meth dealers looking for a way out as well, with contentious and evil methods, it leads to a big free for all at Donnybrook, a last man standing contest, where the ex-marine see a opportunity to use his skills to get his family out of squalor and find some redemption in his soul, but it all comes with a price for everyone involved, this one folks is not easy to watch, but you take it in and realize that there is a message somewhere within this film.