Where to Watch Small Things Like These
- CrossCutCriticMay 1, 2025A Man, a Coal Sack, and the Weight of Conscience. --- There are no explosions in this film. No chase scenes. No courtroom victories. Only a man in work clothes, delivering coal in the bitter Irish winter of 1985, and quietly discovering that the world he thought was decent… isn’t. And in that stillness, Small Things Like These becomes one of the most powerful films of the year. --- Cillian Murphy plays Bill Furlong — a modest coal merchant, husband, father of five daughters. He’s not the kind of man who seeks trouble. He’s the kind of man who carries it, in bags over his shoulder, and in the quiet creases of his face. His life is small. Ordinary. But it’s the kind of ordinary that keeps a town alive — until he delivers coal to a convent-run laundry, and hears something through the locked doors. --- This isn’t a mystery. Not really. We know what he’s going to find. And maybe, on some level, so does he. It’s not the discovery that changes him. It’s the decision. To acknowledge what he saw. To not look away. To become the kind of man who does something — even if that something is small. --- The film never raises its voice. It doesn’t need to. It lets the silences speak: the silence of a girl with bruised wrists, the silence of a priest shaking hands too tightly, the silence of a town where everyone knows but no one speaks. And then there’s the silence inside Bill — a silence that has lived there since his own childhood, since the day someone didn’t throw him away. That memory becomes the hinge of the film. Gratitude. Conscience. Risk. --- And this, brother, is where the cross slips in — not as symbol, but as shape. Because this isn’t a film about heroism. It’s about obedience. Not obedience to an institution. Not even to law. But to something older, quieter — a mercy that remembers what it was like to be saved by someone else’s kindness. Bill doesn’t make a speech. He doesn’t expose the Church. He just walks back into that convent and makes a choice that will cost him everything and save someone else. --- The world won’t know his name. He’ll never be canonized. But in that one moment, under a sky weighed down by history and ash and silence, he becomes a Christ figure in the most terrifying way: not triumphant, but faithful. --- Small Things Like These reminds us that salvation often begins in shadows. Not in revolutions, but in single acts of courage from those who would rather not be brave at all. It is a cruciform film: quiet, hidden, human. And like the man at its center, it doesn’t raise its voice. It just refuses to look away. ---
- Kevin WardJuly 1, 2025Cillian Murphy is excellent in another quiet reserved role as a man who faces a moral dilemma when he discovers some objectionable practices happening at the local convent. I always say the Catholic Church is one of the greatest movie villains of all time. No exception here, but the pace of the film is glacially slow.
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Small Things Like These was released on November 1, 2024.
Small Things Like These was directed by Tim Mielants.
Small Things Like These has a runtime of 1h 38m.
Small Things Like These was produced by Jeff Robinov, Drew Vinton, Alan Moloney, Catherine Magee, Matt Damon, Cillian Murphy.
In 1985, while working as a coal merchant to support his family, Bill Furlong discovers disturbing secrets kept by the local convent and uncovers truths of his own; forcing him to confront his past and the complicit silence of a small Irish town controlled by the Catholic Church.
The key characters in Small Things Like These are Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy), Sister Mary (Emily Watson), Mrs. Wilson (Michelle Fairley).
Small Things Like These is rated PG-13.
Small Things Like These is a Drama, Indie film.
Small Things Like These has an audience rating of 8.1 out of 10.
Small Things Like These had a budget of $3M.
Small Things Like These has made $12.5M at the box office.