The metaphorical and semi-spiritual "Into the West" focuses on two young boys named Ossie and Tito (Ciaran Fitzgerald, Ruaidhri Conroy), who are living a hard life in an Irish slum, where their father, Papa Riley (Gabriel Byrne, who also co-produced) is constantly in a drunken stupor over the loss of his wife some seven years earlier.
Riley is a "Traveller," a sort of Irish Gypsy. But he's given up life on the road with his family and friends and now spends his time cheating welfare and sleeping it off.
The boys, meanwhile, spend their time begging on the streets and skipping school, until Grandfather (David Kelly) finds a white stallion on the beach. Ossie, the younger son, is immediately taken with the animal and tames and rides him like no one else can. And he takes literally Grandfather's yarn that the horse is really from a land under the sea, "The Land of Eternal Youth."
The boys take the horse upstairs to their slum apartment but it isn't long before the police take it away. Then, a corrupt cop sells it to an even more corrupt rancher. Eventually, the boys steal the horse and hit the road, heading "West," where they think they can become cowboys.
Naturally, the police are in hot pursuit, along with Riley, who has collected some of his old clan (Byrne's real-life wife Ellen Barkin, Colm Meaney of TV's "Deep Space Nine") to help track the lads.
The film's charm comes mainly from the boys, who are very natural and believable on the screen, and youngsters in the audience will probably get a kick out of seeing them taking the horse into an elevator in their apartment building and later, a movie theater, as well as riding through the streets of Dublin. But much of this is perhaps too gritty and foreign to attract the large audience this film is obviously after.
Still, there's no questioning that screenwriter Jim Sheridan ("My Left Foot") and director Mike Newell ("Enchanted April") felt close to the material. Their sincere approach makes up for some of thefilm's lapses, which come primarily in the form of stereotypical villains and policemen.