Directorial debuts can be either hit or miss. Luckily, Robert Carlyle's feature film foray into the auteurs dept. is one of fabulous humour and utter charm. He's managed to pull together a stellar cast, featuring not only himself, Ray Winston, Martin Compston, James Cosmo (looking really old, now), Ashley Jensen and Tom Courtney but also Emma Thomson, made up as Barney Thomson's deadbeat mother.
There is 2 plots on the go and it doesn't take long to work out how these are going to connect. The first is our eponymous lead, Barney, a barber who is completely tired of life and his meaningless existence in a small barber shop in a small town in Scotland. The second is a serial killer on the loose, posting body parts to the victims families. At no point does Carlyle play the film out that the killer could be Barney and it feels like it could have been played out that way, but it plays well the way it is set out.
The film has a fun script, full of Scottish slang and dialogue and there are some odd yet humorous characters. Emma Thompson puts in a terrific performance. She is absolutely hysterical, nails the accent and the dialogue and the make up department have made her totally unrecognisable as an old hag.
The film gets a little silly towards the end, with regards to the police investigation, but when we get back to the story of Barney, it ends on a high note.
Directorial debuts can be either hit or miss. Luckily, Robert Carlyle's feature film foray into the auteurs dept. is one of fabulous humour and utter charm. He's managed to pull together a stellar cast, featuring not only himself, Ray Winston, Martin Compston, James Cosmo (looking really old, now), Ashley Jensen and Tom Courtney but also Emma Thomson, made up as Barney Thomson's deadbeat mother.
There is 2 plots on the go and it doesn't take long to work out how these are going to connect. The first is our eponymous lead, Barney, a barber who is completely tired of life and his meaningless existence in a small barber shop in a small town in Scotland. The second is a serial killer on the loose, posting body parts to the victims families. At no point does Carlyle play the film out that the killer could be Barney and it feels like it could have been played out that way, but it plays well the way it is set out.
The film has a fun script, full of Scottish slang and dialogue and there are some odd yet humorous characters. Emma Thompson puts in a terrific performance. She is absolutely hysterical, nails the accent and the dialogue and the make up department have made her totally unrecognisable as an old hag.
The film gets a little silly towards the end, with regards to the police investigation, but when we get back to the story of Barney, it ends on a high note.
