Starring: Robert Carlyle, Emma Thompson, Ray Winstone, Tom Courtenay, Ashley Jenson, James Cosmo, Martin Compston, Brian Pettifer
Directed by: Robert Carlyle
Rating:
The only actor in Scotland. That's how we refer to Jimmy Cosmo in our household, as we figure you're not actually allowed to male a film north of the border unless he's in it. And clearly for his directorial debut, Robert Carlyle wasn't taking any chances, as not only does Cosmo star in this jet black Glaswegian comedy, but Ashley Jensen, Martin Compston and half the cast of River City have been thrown in too. Yup, this is a Very Scottish Film.
Carlyle himself plays the eponymous anti-hero, a sad-eyed, taciturn barber with a horrible hairdo who's never achieved anything of note in fifty years of boring, mediocre life. Gaunt and miserable (he's brilliantly described as 'hanging over the customers like a haunted tree'), his lack of banter coupled with a tendency to insult the clientèle when riled have made his tenure uncertain. Until he accidentally kills his boss, and life suddenly takes an unexpected bodyswerve.
Like any fifty-year-old man without a wife or girlfriend, Barney turns to the only person he can trust: his cantankerous, sweary, chain-smoking, bingo-playing, wrinkled orange of a Glasgow mammy, Cemolina (sic), brilliantly brought to life by Emma Thompson in a turn as shocking, brilliant and completely out of character as Kristin Scott Thomas's terrifying Crystal in Only God Forgives.
Barney and Cemolina's relationship is the dictionary definition of dysfunctional, reluctantly co-dependent yet vituperatively toxic. And it's their interaction, at once both hilarious and horrible, that sets the somewhat uneven tone of the film, which swings wildly between dark humour and outright farce, pivoting around a key mother/son confrontation that's both comic and really quite upsetting.
Most farcical of all are the police, self-serving dunderheads to a man (or woman), from Tom Courtenay's genially inept Chief Superintendent downwards. Ray Winstone is always a pleasure, whether he's beating bad guys to a pulp or beavering around in Narnia (hands up if you've ever played the 'insert Mr Beaver's missing swearwords' game?) and here he gets to unleash his robust comic powers as the buffoonish, xenophobic Cockney copper trapped up north, determined to bring Thomson daaaaahn.
All polyester trousers, hair gel and cigarette smoke, the film's timeless styling means it could be set in any decade from the '50s onward, lending Glasgow a grimy, downbeat air of the land the 21st century forgot. If Scarlett Johansson's alien thought she had it bad in Under the Skin, she should have seen Barney's Bridgeton.
Part Coen brothers-style grisly crime caper, part kitchen sink character study, like its hero, The Legend of Barney Thomson has its flaws, but is definitely worth encountering.