Tommy’s Hon­our

“You’ll only get one sto­ry from me” utters Peter Mul­lan as Tom Mor­ris. He is one of the found­ing fathers of mod­ern golf, wish­ing to relive not his own lega­cy but that of his son, Tom­my (Jack Low­den), an inter­na­tion­al, com­pet­i­tive golfer and youngest win­ner (to date) of the Open Gold Championship.

Set in mid-19^th cen­tu­ry Scot­land, it’s no sur­prise that this sto­ry found its way into the hands Jason Con­nery, son of Sean, who taught Jason him­self how to mas­ter the game. But this film doesn’t quite live up to more suc­cess­ful and dra­mat­ic sport-biopic pre­de­ces­sors. Game after game, putt after putt, what should be scenes of height­ened sus­pense and intense com­pe­ti­tion fall into the monot­o­nous realms of predictability.

Sim­i­lar shot set-ups are used for each game: close ups on the ball; long shots of its trav­el; reac­tion shots to the golfer’s suc­cess. It makes one game indis­tin­guish­able from the next. By the third game, audi­ences are more com­pelled to watch the back drop of the decay­ing cliffs over open waters. There’s no deny­ing a pic­turesque qual­i­ty to the film, and watch­ing fig­ures cos­tumed in mod­est peri­od dress move against rugged Scot­tish land­scapes may not be sub­stan­tial, but it is at least light­ly pleasurable.

Inter­cut are note­wor­thy moments of ten­sion between Tom­my and his father, the for­mer desir­ing to push and pur­sue golf and the lat­ter act­ing as a relent­less reminder of his oblig­a­tions to help­ing main­tain the small, future­less fam­i­ly shop. As Tom­my gains inter­na­tion­al suc­cess and begins to climb the social lad­der, the film delves deep­er into these pres­sures as well as oth­er rel­e­vant and world­ly issues – fam­i­ly vs career, pover­ty vs wealth, love vs obligation.

But these con­flicts are all too obvi­ous and char­ac­ters too eas­i­ly fall into arche­types: the strict Scot­tish moth­er; the dom­i­neer­ing father; the qui­et, door­mat sis­ter. That said, the actors make the most of the mate­r­i­al, each deliv­er­ing a ground­ed and grit­ty per­for­mance in attempt to make their some­times flat dia­logue feel more real­is­tic. Only three females seem to exist in this old-timey golf­ing world, all of whom are giv­en only scenes that relate to young Tom­my. It’s dis­ap­point­ing, but expected.

Per­haps the sav­ing grace to all this is Ophe­lia Lovibond’s bold per­for­mance as Meg, Tom’s old­er, scan­dalous scullery maid wife who brings a much need­ed mod­ern flare to an oth­er­wise plod­ding dra­ma. Lovibond’s con­fi­dent asser­tion effec­tive­ly com­pli­ments Lowden’s hum­ble and hon­est turn as the tal­ent­ed yet mod­est Tomm. It car­ries the film through, but doesn’t quite swing it into full motion.