Set in 1950, it's the true story of an audacious raid by a quartet of Glasgow students to reclaim the stone of the title from the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey and spirit it north of the border. The 150kg relic, aka the Stone of Scone, had rested there since being filched by Edward I in 1296. All but one English monarch has been crowned while sitting on it since, which had long been a sore point among Scottish nationalists - although the film overstates the breadth of that patriotic feeling in the post-war years.
Smith lavishes on the period setting - smoky pubs and Ford Prefects and tweed jackets - the kind of reverence only an American could manage, although he makes December in Scotland look like a bright Sunday in Mendocino and he displays the slick but bland narrative and visual style of pre-HBO American television.
But the film is fatally short of drama. It plays like an Ealing comedy made by Disney, in which the most exciting thing is the arrival of an easily distracted bobby on the beat and the dramatic high points all involve the conspirators getting cold feet - or colds.
The result is that, by the time we are invited to be stirred to the soul by the plotters' courage and Caledonian fervour, the film is drawing on emotional capital it hasn't amassed. Even the obligatory appearance of the story of Robert the Bruce and the spider as a stirring metaphor for perseverance can't lift a rather juvenile effort out of the doldrums.
Peter Calder
CAST
: Charlie Cox, Kate Mara, Billy Boyd, Robert Carlyle, Brenda Fricker, Peter Mullan
Director
: Charles Martin Smith
Running time
: 90 mins
Rating
: PG (low-level offensive language)
