Father James is a good man intent on making the world a better place, but his best intentions are nearly always thwarted by the spiteful and confrontational inhabitants of his small country town. One Sunday while he is in the confessional, one of his flock suddenly announces that before the next week is over, he intends to kill the priest to avenge a terrible wrong he had suffered at the hands of another priest when he was a child. Father James continues to help his parish and his own daughter, who has appeared after surviving a suicide attempt. A series of troubling events, however, along with his constant perception of sinister forces closing in, lead the priest to wonder if he will have the courage to face his own personal Calvary. "It's not a film about Ireland and Irish troubles, it's a film about everybody's troubles. [...] The humor is anarchic, dark and lacerating, à la Bunuel; the mise-en-scène indebted to Andrew Wyeth; the philosophy to Jean Améry; and the transcendental style inspired by Robert Bresson." [John Michael McDonagh]

By his own admission, John Michael McDonagh was a troubled youth who was once incarcerated for accidentally killing a swan. His time inside was a happy one, however, as he brutally subjected the other boys to a tyrannical reign of terror. Upon his release, he worked in a pie shop, his weight ballooning to over eighteen stone, or five baboons. He is married, disastrously, to a psychologically unstable Australian, though this imperfect union has produced two lovely children, Babs and Willie, both of whom are currently suing him for emotional neglect.