Mickybo and Me is a new Irish film from first time director Terry Loane. Set in Belfast in 1970, it is a look inside the touchingly innocent world of two boys, from either side of the community, who escape their troubling reality [one father is a drunk, the other carrying on public affairs] and come together through their shared fascination with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Promising idea for a film, you'd think, but you'd still be wary. Films about the Troubles tend towards the unwatchable. When you hear this is a low budget effort, from a first time director born in Belfast you get worried. Grey images of little boys caught in the crossfire between balaclava and Che Guevara T-shirt wearing IRA men with hearts of gold on one side, and the 'Hole in the Wall Gang' on the other float into the mind's eye, which is troubling to say the least. Thankfully, Mickybo and Me is nothing like that at all.

"The film isn't about 'The Troubles'," Loane explained to oxygen. "It's about having a best friend, going on an adventure, and having a love of cinema. I think we all had a best friend when we were that age. That's a moment in your life you never forget, when you'd live or die for that person. Even if now you struggle to remember their surname. That's what we tried to capture."

It worked. The bond between the boys is the focus of the film. There is violence and all going on in the background, but Mickybo and Jonjo are so used to it they don't blink. A pub gets blown up, but Mickybo is nonplussed, going through the rubble and finding a finger with a ring still on it. He throws away the ring, keeps the finger as a souvenir.

Mickybo and Me is not unlike The Butcher Boy in it's exploration of the slightly twisted, but still logical in its own way, reality of twelve year old young lads with problems. Mickybo and Jonjo get to escape their not so nice Belfast lives, and the local playground bullies, and really do go around finding dead bodies, robbing banks, hiding out in hay barns, jumping off cliffs and staying one step ahead of the police, just like Butch and Sundance. It all makes sense in its own way.

The boy's world is excellently rendered by Loane. Mickybo and Me is the most visually arresting Irish film I've seen in quite a while. From the opening credits all the way through there are some startling shots and skilfully filmed sequences, as the director tries to put you inside the boys' own world. Loane thinks that his background - Art School, lots of experience working in theatre as a designer, not so much in film - helped him achieve this. "In film a lot of people think if you act or write you can direct, but as a designer there is a natural progression. Directing a film is not like writing a book, it's cinema. Details of design, the colour compositions, the costumes were all vitally important. We had to make it cinematic." And he definitely did.

Which is even more impressive seeing as Mickeybo and Me started off life as a stage play called Mojo Mickybo written by Owen McCafferty. Loane originally came across the play when he was the production designer for the play's Belfast run in 1998. "I thought this has to be bigger. There's a film in this." So he asked McCafferty could he adapt the play for the screen, and was told yeah fine go for it. It took two years to work out the screenplay, and then plenty more time to get the funding organised, but Loane knew what he wanted to do.

"The play was very different," he explains. "Two adults played all the characters, including the two boys. But for the film the point of view was so important, the audience had to know what we now call the troubles were kicking off in the background, but for the kids they were on an adventure. The audience had to know the boys were just loving it, until the end all the bad shit had to be in the background."

So it was important Loane and his producers found two lead kids up to the task. And they did. Niall Wright [Jonjo: Prod and narrator] and John-Jo McNeill [Mickybo: Taig and leader], really do carry the film themselves, despite excellent work in the supporting roles from the likes of Julie Walters, Adrian Dunbar and Ciaran Hinds. Finding the right actors for the roles of Mickybo and Jonjo took a long time.

"We wanted local kids to play the roles, so we knew we'd have to look for people with no training," explains Loane. They put an ad on the radio, and 400 boys turned up for a casting session. But nobody fitted so Loane and his casting people started visiting schools in Belfast. "We went through 24 different schools. We'd go in and chat to the classes and then invite some kids to workshops. This took about five months. We knew if we couldn't find anybody good enough we'd be in trouble." Thankfully the work paid off. Niall Wright and John-Jo McNeill have that blend of seriousness and innocence that can probably only come naturally. "There's not a moment I'm not happy with," says Loane. "Their performances are just breathtaking."

Just like in The Butcher Boy, the boys' fascination with another world allows them to escape. Actual footage of Butch and Sundance is incorporated into the film. And as Butch and Sundance were really only oversize kids anyway, the interweaving of the two worlds is believable, and draws the audience into the innocence. Mickybo and Jonjo have about as much chance of getting to Australia as Butch and Sundance had of evading the Superposse. But that doesn't stop them believing in the dream.

Seeing as most people know things didn't go to plan for Butch and Sundance in the end, a sense of foreboding lies over the sunny Northern countryside as the two boys continue their eleven year old sized crime spree. The interweaving of Belfast and Bolivia is nicely handled by Loane, who contacted the real Butch and Sundance to get permission for the clips to be used: "Redford and Newman had to be asked. So we sent them the script and they read it, and thankfully they said yes." Which must have been great for a first time director. I can only imagine they'd enjoy the film.

oxygen are really recommending Mickybo and Me. As well as not being 'about' the Troubles, it's not even really an 'Irish' film. It's way more fun than you'd expect. Even if towards the end when the innocence starts to fade things get a bit drawn out and melodramatic, you can forgive it.

The proud director doesn't know what will come next ["I've been to some meetings, read some scripts, but nothing definite yet."] But he is raring to go and make the next film. At the moment Terry Loane loves the film business. He's like Mickybo and Jonjo, escaping the reality of everyday life, getting Robert Redford on the phone, making dreams for a living.

Previously published on oxygen.ie