Dont get the bums rush
Rating: 7/10
Running Time: 96 minutes
UK Certificate: 15
Fitz, Seany and Nellie (Jamie Sives, Kevin McKidd and Iain Robertson) are three twenty-something laddies desperate to escape the mind-numbing tedium of life in the Scottish Highland backwater of Tullybridge. Its got one grimy little pub, one tiny pathetic shop, and an unattended corpse clutching a lump of solid gold. Are they thinking what were thinking? Too right they are.
This sharp, dark comedy dumps us right into the misty and strangely-accented netherworld that is the Scots Highlands, and takes the inbuilt quirkiness of the setting for all its worth. All our three heroes want to do is cash in on the nugget and get the Hell out of their hills-and-heather-surrounded prison, but news travels fast in a wee town like this one.
As one ridiculous (but nonetheless entertaining) twist leads to the next, it seems each time Fitz and co can take a step forward they end up taking two steps back. An underworld curling club (yes, really!), a gang of murderous hard men (led, of course, by big James Cosmo who else?) and a REALLY nasty-looking dog all stand in their way. And I havent even mentioned the bloke who runs the old folks home yet.
Produced by on-off Hollywood superstar Dougray Scott (who also has a fairly minor role in the picture) and distributed by Scottish Screen, this must surely be the most enjoyable film to come out of Scotland in the last few years. Rarely bothering to get serious and revolving around a series of tongue-in-cheek contrivances and coincidences, its almost like an old school caper movie only with some much meaner humour.
Sives, who also starred in 2002s Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself and had a minor part in fitba flick Mean Machine, produces another confident performance here and, for this reviewers money, secures his place in the one to look out for category. That goes for writer-director Stewart Svaasand too, wholl hopefully avoid falling into the trap of giving us one good movie and then simply disappearing, never to be heard of again. Scotland needs more stuff like this.
It's Got: Christ on a dashboard.
It Needs: A better title Fools Gold or The Bums Rush (which was actually its original working title) to name but two possibilities.
Summary
A hidden gem in more ways than one.