Young Git Hynes (Peter McDonald) has returned from a bum prison rap dismayed to find that his best friend, Anto (David Wilmot), has shacked up with his girl, Sabrina (Antoine Byrne). That does not prevent him from putting out the eye of one of the goons pressuring Anto for a loan. As punishment, mob head Tom French (Tony Doyle) has Git "go down" with Bunny Kelly (Brendan Gleeson), a loser whose slash sideburns and sweet-tooth suggest a broken family, defiant ineptitude, and a sad and unsavory secret. Their assignment is to kidnap Frank Grogan (Peter Caffrey), a mobster who supposedly owes French a lot of money.

What makes this film a charmer is the down time of conversation in between bouts of slapstick violence, mountingly hilarious dialogues between the obtuse and indignant Bunny and the morose but principled Git, or between the pair of kidnappers and their wheedling but ingratiating victim. The over-complicated plot proves largely irrelevant; the characters make I Went Down a plunge worth taking.