The Legend of Barney Thomson

If you appreciate a good black comedy as much as I do, you will enjoy this flick. It was well done. I give Carlyle a lot of credit for his directorial debut with an excellent performance by Emma Thompson, who was a riot.

Overall it was quite a nice ride, very entertaining stuff. If you don't have a sense of humor, you will not get this film at all.

The titular Barney Thomson (Robert Carlyle) is a less than friendly man, he complains about many things and is generally unapproachable. One day he stumbles upon a series of hazardously unfortunate events which lead him into awkward world of crime. This is a very distinct style of comedy, which can be poignantly funny at times, but also riddled with tons of profanity and can be even resentful, thus it probably caters to more adult audience.

Acting is sharply over-the-top as Barney wonders into sillier antics than the last, involving his strange mom as well as detectives hell bent on pursuing a serial killer. It's a harsh unapologetic direction for comedy, a bit similar to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, certainly not a light watch for casual or younger audience, but for mature demographic the oddities might be a treat.

The cast performs with intense gusto and yelling, which is also one of the movie's quirks. Its accent is very thick, when said in fast pace it can be confusing, so subtitles would be helpful for this case. It can be jarring when the movie tries to pull off a strangely dark tone, borderline uncomfortably so. Furthermore, the actors seem truly invested on delivering all around antagonizing characters, thus there's no real heroes here.

The movie could be vulgar at times, yet its crude and bloody nature might be ironically entertaining.

Glasgow police Detective Inspector Holdall (Ray Winstone) leads the failing investigation into a serial killer who dismembers his victims. He gets demoted and has to report to rival Detective Inspector June Robertson (Ashley Jensen). Barney Thomson (Robert Carlyle) is a bitter mediocre barber and nobody likes his angry demeaner. His boss Wullie Henderson fires him and he accidentally kills Wullie. He brings the body home and his mom Cemolina (Emma Thompson) chops it up for unknown reasons.

Robert Carlyle tries his hand at directing. The material has some dark humor. The cast is stacked. It works to some extend. Carlyle needs a more daring visual eye to fully satisfy the material's dark surreal potential. It's a solid debut but he doesn't have an unique enough style. He remains a great actor but his directing career is still in doubt. At least, Emma Thompson seems to be having loads of fun. The movie sings whenever she's with Carlyle.

Funny Clever Great acting Great script.

U. K. Comedy at its cutting edge.

Try it. You'll be pieces.

This crime-comedy is lead actor Robert Carlyle's directorial debut. In it he plays the title character who is a late middle-aged barber living a life of humiliations who accidentally kills his boss after an argument, leading to a chain reaction of ever worsening events.

Typified by distinctive on-location shooting in the east end of Glasgow, this is a pretty good effort all round. It benefits from some effective comic acting by its cast, aside from Carlyle himself the two other standouts are Ray Winstone as a cockney cop displeased to be stationed north of the border and, best of all, working under heavy make-up Emma Thompson is very convincing as Carlyle's elderly Glaswegian mother; as per usual she puts in fine work here and nails her character pretty firmly. The plot-line isn't really massively interesting to be fair and, instead, the film works as a character-driven comedy. Fortunately, the characters are, for the most part, well-drawn and the comedy is often pretty funny. Things are ultimately rounded off with a finale that is perhaps a little predictable once the basic set-up is established but for this it can be forgiven. All-in-all, while it doesn't exactly break the mould, this film is still a pretty solid bit of fun.