Herald rating: * * * *
Thatcher-era Britain spawned a sub-genre of working-class dramas in which working blokes triumph over redundancy or similar catastrophe. To some, such films operate as a political opiate - swamping righteous anger with feelgood stories. But while Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Michael Winterbottom maintained
the rage, films such as The Full Monty and Brassed Off filled houses.
This one's definitely a house-filler, and easy to pick holes in for its lack of political smarts. But, thanks in large part to a terrific central performance from Mullan, who played the title role for Loach in My Name is Joe, it packs an emotional punch out of all proportion to its slight premise.
Mullan plays Frank, a Glasgow shipbuilder laid off at 55 who finds he is a stranger to his wife and son. His emotional alienation manifests itself first as a malaise which is not improved when he goes to sign on for the dole and finds his case officer is his daughter-in-law.
Frank's sole pleasure is meeting his mates to swim lengths at the local swimming pool and so it is apt when he hatches a plan that will make or break him: to swim the English Channel.
If you fancy you know how it all turns out, you won't be wrong - but director Dellal, an Irish documentary-maker, and writer Alex Rose, both making feature debuts, avoid the hoary and manipulative formulas that might be expected of such a story. The opening 15 minutes or so are a miracle of narrative economy, sketching out Frank's character and world with beautiful precision and the film is full of telling moments, glancingly observed.
Even the scene in which Frank, watching a paraplegic lad smash his way across a width of the pool, makes his decision lacks the mawkishness we might have expected. The supporting cast is wonderful, in particular Blethyn as Frank's wife Joan and Benedict Wong as a deadpan Chinese with a thick-as-fog Glaswegian accent. But it's Mullan's film and he's marvellous. His stocky, beady-eyed pugnacious demeanour defies sentimentality - and so when his pain shows, it tears your heart out.
CAST: Peter Mullan, Brenda Blethyn
DIRECTOR: Gaby Dellal
RUNNING TIME: 98 mins
RATING: M, medium level violence
SCREENING: Lido, Rialto
