Martin (John Amplas), a young man who looks around 20-years-old, boards a train in Indianapolis, Indiana for New York. At night, he breaks into a sleeping car and sedates a woman with a syringe full of narcotics. She struggles, but he tells her not to struggle or be upset because she wont feel pain. After a few minutes, the woman falls asleep, and Martin has sex with the unconscious woman. Afterwards, he slices her wrists with a razor blade so he can drink her blood. The woman bleeds to death in her sleep.
In the morning, the train stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Martin disembarks. He is met by Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) an elderly and hostile old man who claims to be his cousin from the Old World. Together, they travel by another train to the town of Braddock, a dying industrial suburb. They walk to Cuda's large house where he shows Martin his living quarters. Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 84-year-old vampire from his old country. He has taken in Martin because he is family, but tells him, "First I will save your soul. Then I shall destroy you." Martin denies being a vampire and implies that Cuda is merely his uncle rather than his cousin. Cuda then puts up strings of garlic on the doors to his and his granddaughter's room, and then holds up a small cross when Martin approaches him. Martin takes away the cross, and even takes a bite of the garlic mocking these attempts by saying bitterly, "There's no real magic... ever". Cuda tells Martin that he can come and go as he pleases. But he also warns Martin that he will kill him if he kills anyone in Braddock. He also tells Martin to stay away from his granddaughter Christine (Christine Forrest), whom arrives home from her job that evening.
Cuda introduces Christine to Martin, but also warns her to stay away from him. But Christine instead strikes up a friendship with Martin who confides in her about his vampire heritage. When Cuda later confirms Martin's claims to be a vampire, Christine, not surprisingly, refuses to believe either one. She thinks that Cuda and the other members of her family have driven Martin to insanity by making him think that he is a vampire. It is never revealed if Martin really is a vampire, or just a shy and lonely youth with troubled issues. Christine is the only person that Martin gets the courage to talk to. When Christine's boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini) arrives at the house for dinner, Martin stops talking and backs away despite Arthur's attempt at a conversation. Christine later confides in Martin that she hopes to leave Braddock someday with Arthur, even though Martin points out that Arthur treats her badly and is both verbally and physically abusive towards her.
When Christine sees that Martin won't talk to anyone else, she buys him a phone which he installs in his room. Martin begins to repeatingly call a radio talk show where he describes what it's like to be a vampire. He becomes known on the radio as "the Count" to all the listeners. But the patronizing host (Michael Gornick) thinks he's just crazy.
Martin gets a job at Cuda's grocery store of stocking shelves, hauling boxes around, and even gets to be a delivery boy for some of the customers. One of his customers is a certain Abby Santini (Elyane Nadeau), who becomes taken in with Martin. She is a very friendly young woman who is depressed when she tells Martin that her husband is unfaithful. But Martin still does not have the nerve to talk with her, so she is happy to have someone to confide in with her life problems. Martin phones the radio show host to describe his infatuation with the housewife and senses that she wants to have sex with him. When the radio show host asks Martin if it is a sexual problem that he has involving women criticizing him during sex, Martin replies that he has never had sex with a woman who was awake.
One day, Martin travels by train to outside Braddock to look for victims. At a supermarket, he follows a young woman (Sarah Venable) home to her posh suburban house. He sees the woman's husband (Richard Rubenstein) leave for a long business trip, and Martin decides this would be the right time for more feeding. Martin returns to the house after dark and breaks in through the garage door. But it is Martin who gets the surprise when he bursts into her bedroom to find her in bed with her adulterous lover Lewis (Al Levitsky). After a vicious struggle, Martin jabs both of them with hyprodermic needles with narcotics, and waits for the drugs to take affect. He drags the unconscious body of Lewis from the house to a clump of trees across the street where he kills him by shoving a broken tree branch into his neck and drinks his blood. Martin returns to the house where he has sex with the unconscious woman. But out of compassion and pity, he decides to let her live.
Martin begins to have romantic monochrome visions of his vampire past (real or imagined), where he drained blood from a young woman and was chased through the streets of a nameless European town by a torch-lit mob.
During one Sunday at church, Cuda brings home Father Howard (George A. Romero) who asks him about the possibility of exorcism and demon possession. Father Howard calls upon the elderly Father Zulemans (Clifford Forrest, Jr.) over at Cuda's request. Together, Cuda and Zulemans confront Martin his bedroom and attempt to perform an exorcism on him. At this point, Martin remembers (another real or imaginary flashback), in the Old Country of people trying to perform an exorcism on him, and he flees them. Martin then flees from Cuda and Zuelmas as well. A little later that night, Martin terrorizes Cuda in a children's playground when he puts on a Dracula cape and puts false fangs into his mouth to pretend that he really is a vampire.
One day, Martin finally musters the courage to talk with Mrs. Santini during a routine delivery to her house where he tells her that he's aware of her attempts to seduce him and wants now to have sex with her. After having sex for the first time, Mrs. Santini becomes more depressed for she tells Martin that her husband just left her because she discovered that she cannot bear children, and that her desires towards him are based on sex and nothing else. But Martin wants to stay with her and help her move on with her life. Martin tells the radio show host about his affair with the housewife and that he no longer has the urge to attack other women.
Meanwhile, Arthur meets with Cuda and tells him that he wants Christine to leave town with him so they can get married and start a family. But Christine becomes angry at Cuda when he tells Arthur that insanity runs in their family and he shouldn't consider having children with her. Shortly afterwards, Christine packs up and leaves Braddock for New York with Arthur despite Martin telling her that Arthur is abusive towards her. But her mind is made up. Before leaving, Christine tells Martin that she really has no ill feelings towards him and just wants to make a fresh start with her life. She says goodbye to him and promises to write. But Martin knows that with an abusive and possessive man in Christine's life, she probably won't.
Depressed over losing his one true friend, Martin phones the radio show host and tells him that he's getting "shaky" and wants to go out looking for more victims. That night, Martin travels to a rough crime-ridden area of Pittsburgh and attacks two derelicts in a alley, injecting them with narcotics. He kills one of them by silting the bum's wrist and drinking his blood. Martin is about to kill the second one when a police car shows up and gives chase. Martin narrowly escapes during a long chase on foot which leads from the garbage strew streets and through a local store. Martin runs into an old warehouse where a drug deal is going down. A shootout between the two cops and the three thugs begins where all of them are killed, leaving Martin as the sole survivor who casually walks away from the carnage.
One day, Martin finds Mrs. Santini dead in her bathtub, after she had slit her writs with a razor blade. Martin anonymously calls the police to report the body and leaves. He phones the radio show host one final time to say that he really doesn't need friends or people to talk to for he is his own person. But when Cuda learns about Mrs. Santini's suicide, is mistakenly thinks Martin killed her and made it look like a suicide as he's done before. Cuda walks into Martin's room while he is asleep and kills him by hammering a wooden stake through Martin's heart.
Cuda buries Martin's body in his back garden, while over the closing credits various voices from people are heard talking to the radio show host asking the whereabouts of "the Count".
剧情略有点平，感觉是借着北爱冲突的大背景拍情感和人际关系，从叙事角度如果单独作为一部电影来看不是特别完整。
结尾Judi Dench特写镜头的短短三句台词 堪称演技大赏 也是全片高光时刻
Kenneth Branagh有一个金子般的童年，父慈母爱，学习好还有漂亮女孩子喜欢
呃真的是毫无惊喜的命题作文式电影……2.5
年度观影 No.507
字幕组很了解我，在这部我觉得除了配乐一无是处的电影里，给我标明了所有配乐的歌词和歌名，这就是我给这个不值得三星的电影五星的理由。
肯尼思布拉纳的导演才能属实有限，开头那混乱的调度，炫技是为了让观众头疼吗？视点过于散乱。但后面渐入佳境，情感还是加分的，布拉纳拍出了那种乡愁，尤其是跑路前的犹豫不决
纵使世界乌云密布，走入影院的那一刻，我的世界依旧色彩缤纷。
不可抗力皆因沒有想像力，才那麼需要黑白來補救。《羅馬》都能把幾坨屎拍出不明覺厲的形式感。肯尼去到盡也只是把舞台上的彩色，反射到奶奶的眼鏡上，黑白裡帶點彩，搞得這麼初級。
给五星有点过了，整体显得匠气了些，但无疑是个可爱又真诚的片子。朱迪·丹奇演得实在太好。乡愁真的是太容易击中人了。
视角相对的单一保证了一份私密化，而在这份私密里，故事不乏趣味和温情，但也过于着墨太深，落了表演痕迹，这部分的冲突，导演像是完全不在乎。
要說也是比較接近Terence Davies吧，怎麼一堆人提到《羅馬》？，2021.12.08
期待很久的片子，略失望！既不是罗马，也不是美丽人生，很肤浅的个人表达，杂糅了很多有趣的元素都只浮于表面！音乐填塞的很满，不过爱尔兰人唱歌真是好听啊
冲着结尾的And the healing Has begun可以多加一星
导演到底在表现啥个玩意儿啊
一般化，在北爱独立这个题材没什么突破，黑白片并没有深度
饰演小男孩的裘德修与饰演父亲的杰米多南两个人的对手戏拍的异常感人，黑白影像反而显得更加隽永，非常讲究的美术和摄影，配乐也恰到好处。不抱任何期望，却发现更多的感动和惊喜。
pop说，“你是贝尔法斯特15区的巴迪，无论你去哪里变成什么样，这永远是事实。” 所以故乡是离开故乡以后的身份证，也是漂泊在外的一份安全感，像牵着风筝的线一样。好像很多导演最终会拍一下自己的故乡，让我想起贾科长说的回望故乡赋予我们获取看世界的最初的经验。
3.5星。很《罗马》，但绝对逊于《罗马》。小孩很可爱，以至于整部影片都随着小孩的视角可爱起来了。
爵爷只要在自导的电影中不出镜，电影的观感就能有所提升。况且这次他的技法相比之前的作品也更加娴熟，所以这部在许多人看来是“效仿之作”的电影中，我还是感受到了他本人内心中对于故乡和童年生活真诚的爱恋之情。以小孩的视角去展开叙事，无疑是最能把握住观众心理的，但布拉纳好像在执行层面出了点差错，因为他想通过宗教这一层面去展现出夹杂于其中的母爱，亲情和爱情，但“宗教”这个引子却又被提及的不明显，所以才导致于整部电影看下来就是个感情记事簿，没有啥可以值得单独拎出来的情感迸发点。所以尽管我对于本片的观感很喜欢，但还是认为它在某些地方理应值得做得更好。 小男主有时候给我的感觉也太像“乔乔”罗曼·格里芬·戴维斯了。
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