The Leg­end of Bar­ney Thomson

It’s inter­est­ing to pon­der whether actors realise when they’re star­ing in bad movies. Here is a case of an actor (Robert Car­lyle) shift­ing to the director’s chair and per­haps not real­is­ing that he’s made a quite ter­ri­ble film. Okay, there are some basic tech­ni­cal pass­es to be allowed in The Leg­end of Bar­ney Thom­son, and there’s one or two appeal­ing­ly off-kil­ter per­for­mances (cf Emma Thomp­son with OAP pros­thet­ics and fun­ny accent, aka ​“doing a Tilda”).

But for the most part, this is a wretched film that’s over­loaded with casu­al hatred passed off as iron­ic cyn­i­cism. It hates the young. It hates the old. It hates the poor. It hates women. It hates out­siders. It hates author­i­ty fig­ures. It hates the police. It hates small busi­ness­es. It hates local her­itage. It hates Glas­gow. It hates peo­ple. But most of all, this film is the ene­my of basic coher­ence. It begins on a prat­fall, when sniv­el­ling dullard Bar­ney (Car­lyle) acci­den­tal­ly mur­ders his boss in a sit­u­a­tion so improb­a­ble that you’re wait­ing for it to be revealed as a drunk­en dream sequence.

Barney’s deci­sion to then dis­pose of the corpse and not fess up to the crime (of which he is clear­ly inno­cent) helps to toss out any shred of cred­i­bil­i­ty and empa­thy, and the movie dances on the spot for anoth­er 75 or-so min­utes pre­tend­ing to be a provin­cial riff on Sweeney Todd until… it ends. It’s a very ​’90s film, edgy in a way that recalls the slew of Brit flicks which emerged try­ing to be the next Trainspot­ting or the new Full Monty.

There’s a basic con­tempt for the audi­ence in the way it presents char­ac­ters who drift through life mak­ing idi­ot­ic deci­sions that have no basis in real­i­ty. It’s very tough to describe what this film is and to whom it might appeal. Like the char­ac­ter of Bar­ney, there’s lit­tle clue as to whether he’s the hero, the vil­lain or just a reg­u­lar Joe with a sil­ly hair­cut who stum­bled across test­ing times. One thing’s for cer­tain, we’re nev­er once made to care enough to want to fig­ure it all out.