In the debut season of “Kin,” a boy is killed, and his family embarks on a gangland war with an international cartel – a war that is impossible to win. But the Kinsellas have something the cartel does not: the unbreakable bonds of blood and family.
“Kin,” tells the story of the fictitious Kinsella family who lives in an upscale area of Dublin. They are wealthy and gained their fortune by being one of the most prominent drug-dealing families in the city. They are led by Frank Kinsella (Aiden Gillen), who answers to Eamon Cunningham (Ciarán Hinds), the city’s drug overlord. The Kinsellas sell drugs from various dealers, but when Eamon informs Frank that they will only sell his narcotics moving forward, it causes an upset in the Kinsella family. They argue that if they can only sell Eamon’s drugs and nobody else’s, they will lose money while he will make more profits.
Frank wants to keep the peace, stating that they must abide by the new rule, and the rest of the family begrudgingly agrees, but when Frank’s hot-headed son Eric (Sam Keeley) gets into a fight with one of Eamon’s dealers, Caolon Moore (Lloyd Cooney), things begin to escalate quickly. One night, high on Coke, Eric drives by a party that Caolon is attending and opens fire in a drive-by shooting, injuring several people. In retaliation, some of Eamon’s men track Eric down to the gym where he works out, and as they open fire, Eric’s younger cousin Jamie (Cian Fitzsimons) is caught in the crossfire and dies instantly. Jamie’s mother, Amanda (Clare Dunne), and father, Jimmy (Emmett J. Scanlan), want revenge, but after Frank meets up with Eamon, he informs Frank that Jamie’s death was an unfortunate accident and that the family needs to regain their composure if they are to avoid all-out war between the families.
At the outset, they do their best to move forward, but when Jimmy’s younger brother Michael (Charlie Cox) is released from prison and learns of Jamie’s death, he is outraged but complies with Frank’s wishes to keep the peace. Wanting to try and reconnect with his estranged daughter Anna (Hannah Adeogun), an attorney tells him that trying to get a court order to allow him visitation rights will be complex as he accidentally shot and killed Anna’s mother in a drug-fueled binge years earlier. He is determined to go straight and not work with his family’s business to prove he is staying out of trouble, but when some of Eamon’s henchmen go rogue and threaten Amanda’s only remaining son Anthony (Mark Mckenna Jr.) and try to kidnap Anna, Michael and Amanda decide to take matters into their own hands, bypassing Frank and the rest of the family, determined to kill Eamon and take control of the city for themselves.
While “Kin” is fictional, it is supposedly based on the real-life events surrounding the Hutch–Kinahan feud in the Republic of Ireland, which began in 2015 and is still ongoing. “Kin” is an absorbing crime drama that shows the seedy underbelly of Dublin and Ireland in general. Many people, typically from outside of Ireland, envisage the Emerald Isle as a land of rolling green hills, lively cities, traditional Irish music, and renowned charm, but like any major city around the world, it has a dark side. Since the mid-1970s, Ireland has been inundated with illegal drugs; heroin, cocaine, LSD, Meth, and many more, all you have to do is look beneath the surface, and you’ll find it. Growing up in Dublin in the ’70s and ’80s, I witnessed a lot of drug use by friends, many of whom are now dead as a result. “Kin” effectively captures the rampant casual drug use throughout Dublin and not just the impoverished but also the wealthy.
All of the performances are top-notch, and once the conflict between the Kinsellas and the Cunninghams flares up, you know things will only worsen. While Aiden Gillen and Ciarán Hinds’ performances are cold and calculating, Clare Dunne and Charlie Cox steal the show. Dunne surreptitiously masterminds the eventual outcome that will change her life and that of her family. At the same time, Cox unites with her to achieve said result, functioning as her right-hand man, willing to do whatever it takes to eradicate the man who tried to kidnap his daughter. Dunne’s Amanda mirrors Michael Corleone in “The Godfather,” gradually embroiled in the violent side of her family’s business through the death of her son, progressively losing her humanity and becoming more and more unsympathetic, laying the foundation for her to assume her rightful place as the head of the family. The ending is left wide open for a season two, and I really hope they follow through as there are so many places for the story to go.
Available on Blu-ray and DVD May 10th
