By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2 RUNTIME: 90 minutes

Culkin won a Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe and is nominated for an Oscar in the same category while his co-star Jesse Eisenberg who wrote and directed this quiet gem of a movie receives a similar Best Original Screenplay nod.

• Read on for reasons including how this elegant film is both brief and hard-hitting

We’re here because we’ve finally seen landmark TV series Succession in its entirety and loved Culkin’s performance there while here he shows his impressive range as an actor.

Culkin plays Benji, screwed-up cousin of Eisenberg’s uptight and successful family man David, as the pair travel to Poland to see the childhood home of their late grandmother on a Holocaust tour including a stop at Majdanek, a Nazi concentration and extermination camp.

The tour group is led by Will Sharpe’s over analytical Yorkshireman who is confronted by Benji for his emphasis on facts over respect in front of a group which includes a survivor of the Rwandan genocide who has converted to Judaism and an American wife played by Olivier Award winner Liza Sadovy (Cabaret, Kit Kat Club).

The group eventually warms to the kind, open-hearted and outgoing Benji and are shocked when Eisenberg’s socially awkward David explains how the pair came to be on the trip together.

Almost a decade ago we saw Eisenberg star on the West End stage in a play he wrote (The Spoils, Trafalgar Studios) which left us a little cold but A Real Pain is as warm and touching as it is brief.

It’s also impressive that as writer/director he casts himself in a role as a well-meaning cousin who is neurotic and far less sympathetic than the emotional rollercoaster portrayed by Culkin.

It’s testament to the quality of acting in Succession that Culkin’s brother in the show, played by Jeremy Strong, is also 1 of his fellow nominees for Best Supporting Actor for The Apprentice.

This has the feel of a road movie with cousins re-connecting, smoking weed on hotel rooftops and skipping fares on trains in Poland and yet is always respectful to the reason they are in the country they are.

We wouldn’t be surprised if Culkin wins that Oscar because his Benji is complicated yet rounded in a film that feels like a play with difficult subject matter that is hugely pertinent yet massively understated.

A Real Pain is exquisitely written with a revelatory performance at its very heart.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy A Real Pain Tickets
• Have you seen a Kieran Culkin performance show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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