Director Ken Loach is drawn back to working class Glasgow again for his
latest comedy drama about a young thug who’s given a second chance and turns
out to be a good wee lad after all.
Robbie is in Court for the umpteenth time after a particular brutal assault
on another young man, but his Lawyer pleads with the Judge for leniency as he
is about to become a father for the first time.
He avoids going to prison this time and instead is given a sentence of
Community Service.
He’s out doing just this with a gang of other offenders painting a church hall when he
gets a call that his baby is about to be born. Harry the Social Worker
accompanies him to the hospital and witnesses his girlfriend's father and uncles
pummeling him as a warning to for him to keep away, and he takes pity on Robbie and takes him
to his house recover. To celebrate the
birth Harry gives the new young father a glass of vintage whisky, which he at
first wants to spoil by adding coke, but reluctantly drinks it neat.
As a treat Harry decides to take the whole crew doing Community Service to
a Whisky Distillery in Edinburgh and after the Tour they are given a wee dram
each, and Robbie suddenly discovers he actually really likes the taste. But far more than just stirring up his taste buds
he starts to realize that he has a ‘noise’ for this and can actually
distinguish one whisky from another. Back home he decides to starts to learn up
on them and by the time that Harry takes him to a lecture and a Whisky Tasting, Robbie surprises everyone with his new found natural ability to identify
even rare whiskies.
Whilst he is turning over a new leaf and paying back his debt to society he
is still constantly under threat from both his girlfriend’s relatives and also the friends
of the boy he had harmed, and it soon becomes obvious that he will have no
alternative than to leave town to start a new life with his new family somewhere
else. Something that will take money, which he doesn’t have. So when he learns about a cask of priceless
whisky is about to go on auction soon, he conjures up
a rather clever plot on how to steal some of the precious liquid which could
possibly net him and his Community Service gang a cool £250,000.
Despite its setting this movie lacks the grittiness that one expects from a Loach working-class
drama, and its all a little bit too cozy and sweet to be anything other than a rather
ordinary feel-good heist comedy. And one
that relies on rather feeble stereotypical humor about kilts and Irn Bru (a popular Scottish
cola). Disapointing as this is after all the work of an acclaimed edgy Director who's had 14 of his movies
shown at Cannes (and winning 9 awards there including the Palme D’or once). Paul
Brannigan the untrained actor with an authentic facial scar playing Robbie is the real thing alright as he
was actually plucked from a life of crime to go 'straight' especially for this
film, but the script from Loach’s regular collaborator Paul Laverty doesn't
serve him that well.
A pleasant enough movie that could (and should) have been better, and one
you will need a good ear for thick Scottish brogue to understand it too.
P.S. "Angels' share" is a term for the portion (share) of a wine or distilled spirit's volume that is lost to evaporation during aging in oak barrels.
★★★★★★★
P.S. "Angels' share" is a term for the portion (share) of a wine or distilled spirit's volume that is lost to evaporation during aging in oak barrels.
★★★★★★★
