INTERMISSION By Brooke Holgerson

First-time director John Crowley’s film is the anti–Love Actually. It’s got the same meandering, multi-character structure, but for Love Actually’s cheerful optimism it substitutes a kind of helpless rage. A woman left by her husband beats the hell out of her new lover during sex. A boxer-turned-cop bloodies his perps to a pulp. Yet underneath all of its barely submerged, occasionally explosive violence lurks a sentimental heart, along with a dark sense of humor. Featuring Irish all-stars Colin Farrell, Colm Meaney, and Cillian Murphy and Scotland’s Shirley Henderson, this is a well-acted but ultimately aimless film. Characters desperate because they’ve had their hearts broken, or can’t find anyone to break them, cast about with varying degrees of success, trying to numb themselves and one another against their loneliness. Jokes about Henderson’s moustache get old fast, but a wronged woman’s uncontrollable fits of violence are terrifying. (106 minutes) At the Avon.