Okay, I have good news and bad news

Well, this movie was a television show before it became a movie. That’s why it’s called “Ray Donovan: The Movie”, as distinct from being called Ray Donovan: Television Show.

This means that if you never heard of the television show, cancelled after its wow-inducing seventh season concluded in January 2020, then you may be slightly at a loss watching this.

However, spending some time with the principal characters in this movie---Ray and Mickey Donovan---- is worth every moment you have available to enjoy an excellent film.

So, let’s pretend there is no television show, and this is some sort of a sequel which appeared out of the vacuum of your non-viewing pleasure with regard to the television show.

But before we do that, allow me to introduce you to who Ray Donovan is.

This will help you get a fix (pun unintended) on where I am taking you with this rather strange review.

Drums, please!

Ray Donovan is a professional "fixer" who makes things go away as he uses every tool in his crime kit, including crime-scene clean-ups and other illegal activities, to protect those he works for.

He is a family man, who gets the job done if he’s protecting one celebrity or another.

Then, sigh, he has a complicated relationship with his wife and father.

Are we good now?

Okay, then let’s get to the movie.

Co-written by Hollander and star Liev Schreiber, Ray Donovan: The Movie catches up with Mickey Donovan (Jon Voight) and Ray Donovan (Schreiber) who are joined at the hip of a fractured relationship.

Mickey has fled to Boston with money in the form of stocks and is responsible for his grandson-in-law’s death.

Ray follows him to Boston; before this and in between there are flashbacks and flash-forwards. The latter involves Ray speaking to his therapist (Alan Alda) about what’s going to happen that has actually happened.

“I killed my father,” Ray says to his therapist and, as the movie rolls on, we start to appreciate that Ray and his father have a shared rendezvous with death.

There are a number of flashbacks, as I mentioned before, but we are pretending that the seventh season of the television show never happened; remember?

Still, the movie does travel back in time within the movie as the young Ray (Chris Gray) and Mickey (Bill Heck) bend their father-and-son arc towards the justice this movie does to fine acting.

While Ray Donovan: The Movie develops the Mickey-and-Ray dynamic, the rest of the Donovan family add more layers to the storyline.

The performances of Terry (Eddie Marsan), Bunchy (Dash Mihok), Daryll (Pooch Hall) and Bridget Donovan (Kerris Dorsey) are particularly compelling.

Bridget says at one point about her grandfather, “He taught you how to forget,” this line alone defines Ray Donovan.

Ray-Donovan Season 7 Episode 9 Pulse Live Uganda

He has suffered and seems to have found a way to repress his memories.

These repressed recollections serve as a defence mechanism as he unconsciously pushes away painful or traumatic thoughts and memories. This helps him live a relatively normal life, while earning a pointedly abnormal living.

All told, it’s a deep drama with some really captivating performances. So maybe it’s time you watched the television show to flesh out the parts in this movie that are part of a wider visual context.

You won’t regret it.