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Ray, played by Pete Postlethwaite. Credit: Moviestore Collection Ltd \/ Alamy Stock Photo.<\/p>\nIn Hollywood, a \u201cblank check\u201d film is the risky passion project a director gets to make in the afterglow of a huge box office success. For example, had the folks at Warner Brothers not been giddy at the billions raked in by The Dark Knight in 2008, it\u2019s unlikely they would have been so quick to hand Christopher Nolan a couple hundred millions to make Inception a few years later. Sometimes, as with Nolan, the risk pays off for the studio. But not always.<\/p>\n
Though the 1998 film Among Giants only had a budget of less than \u00a32.5m, it was undeniably something of a blank check project for screenwriter Simon Beaufoy. The script had been gathering dust in a desk drawer until the runaway success of his second attempt at writing about working-class Sheffield men \u2014 a little flick you may have heard of called The Full Monty \u2014 meant executives were looking for more. Among Giants, which follows a group who take cash-in-hand work painting electricity pylons on the moors around Sheffield, came out just a year after Beaufoy\u2019s big break. Unfortunately for him, the nicest thing most reviewers had to say about it was that they really, really liked The Full Monty.<\/p>\n
Ray, played by Pete Postlethwaite. Credit: Moviestore Collection Ltd \/ Alamy Stock Photo.<\/p>\n
The Sunday Mirror damned the film with faint praise, saying it was \u201cequally expert\u201d but \u201cnot quite so obviously crowd-pleasing[…] as that earlier Sheffield spectacular\u201d. David Stratton, in Variety<\/a>, minced his words far less: \u201cIt lacks the humor and passion that made Monty such a treat.\u201d According to one critic, the only thing Among Giants has over the previous film is that you actually do get to see \u201cthe full monty\u201d at one point, during a scene in which the late Pete Postlethwaite runs naked with his beau through the water streaming off the Tinsley Towers (surely the most industrial Sheffield love scene imaginable).<\/p>\n The film was a resounding flop, grossing less than half a million worldwide, and it seems to have almost evaporated in the decades since. If you want to give it a watch today, your options are limited. You can, in theory, buy it on VHS from Amazon \u2014 although it\u2019s out of stock at the moment \u2014 or else watch a blurry upload on an obscure Russian website, which currently has less than 2,500 views. (If anyone asks, I bought the last VHS.)<\/p>\n You could argue Among Giants was doomed to obscurity by its subject matter. Watching men get their kit off is, to most people, always going to be a more entertaining prospect than watching men paint electricity pylons. (You are, as more than one underwhelmed viewer pointed out, literally watching paint dry.) Some blame should also lie with the film\u2019s marketing, which pitched a kitchen-sink drama as a feel-good summer romance. In a trailer that features a jarring American-accented voiceover, viewers are promised that the protagonists \u2014 Ray, played by Postlethwaite, and Gerry, played by Rachel Griffiths \u2014 will \u201cclimb new heights, rise above it all [and] fall in love,\u201d as \u201cHigher and Higher\u201d by Jackie Wilson plays in the background. To anyone enticed by this frothy pitch, the actual film must have been a let-down.<\/p>\n Which is a tragedy, in my opinion, because Among Giants deserved much more acclaim than it got. True, as many critics complained, it is not as funny as The Full Monty, although it\u2019s far from humourless. There is also less obvious excitement and peril in its plot \u2014 at least until the film\u2019s final act. Where The Full Monty shouts, Among Giants murmurs, but I\u2019d argue it has even more interesting things to say.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sign up for Sheffield Tribune<\/p>\n Sheffield’s quality newspaper, delivered via email.<\/p>\n No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.<\/p>\n \u201cI never even knew they were painted,\u201d one character remarks at the beginning of the film, when he discovers he\u2019s going to spend the next three months painting electricity pylons. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s a wind-up,\u201d his friend replies. But Postlethwaite\u2019s Ray, the de facto leader of their gang of seven, has indeed made an illicit deal with an employee at the electricity company: they\u2019ll paint 15 miles of pylons by September, in exchange for \u00a380 each a day, but only if they get the entire job done before the volts are switched back on. \u201cBest paid job you\u2019ll ever have,\u201d Ray tells the group \u2014 but only because they\u2019re being hired without the permits or proper safety protocols such dangerous work requires. \u201cNo contract, no stamps, no union bollocks, cash in hand, no problem,\u201d as their new boss puts it. They fall into a new routine, of bundling into old vans, calling each other \u201cbastard\u201d every other sentence, fighting, climbing, and painting.<\/p>\n These pylons are the giants of the film\u2019s title and, among them, we find Australian hitchhiker and climbing fanatic Gerry, who promptly scales one without a harness to ask Ray for a job. She\u2019s in Sheffield to see if the climbing is as good as people claim \u2014 \u201cDoesn\u2019t come any better than the millstone crag,\u201d fellow climber Ray assures her \u2014 but also because she has perennially itchy feet. When Ray asks how long she\u2019s been travelling, she replies: \u201cHow long is a piece of string?\u201d<\/p>\n Ray, who has spent his entire life in Sheffield, is her complete opposite \u2014 settled in his own place, but still popping back to visit his estranged wife and their two kids on occasion. Some critics complained that the romance between the pair seems to spring from nowhere, especially given the large age gap between the two, but it\u2019s just not spelled out in capital letters.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a scene before their first kiss, Ray takes Gerry to the top of the now-demolished Hillfoot gas tank in Neepsend and points out the factory where his dad used to work, the church where he was christened, his school. \u201cI think it\u2019s beautiful to have your whole life laid out like that before your eyes,\u201d Gerry remarks, adding mournfully that all she has \u201cis a whole bunch of people I\u2019m never going to see again and a whole bunch of places I\u2019m never going to go back to\u201d. She\u2019s drawn to Ray because she wants to try a new, more rooted way of life on for size \u2014 slipping it on as easily as she dons one of his old suits in an earlier scene.<\/p>\n The film as a whole is much more subtle than The Full Monty, which is maybe why it didn\u2019t land outside of Sheffield. In The Full Monty, for example, if you happen to miss the first reference to the character Dave\u2019s insecurities about his weight then, never mind, it will be underlined a second, third and even fourth time. The more successful movie even begins with a tourism ad for the city of Sheffield \u2014 describing it as a \u201ccity on the move,\u201d oddly similar to the council\u2019s current insistence that we are \u201con the up\u201d \u2014 to get viewers up to speed. Among Giants is far less willing to hold anyone\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n It\u2019s similarly circumspect about the economic pressures the characters are under. We\u2019re aware everyone is behind on rent and that one character is in trouble with loan sharks, but not everyone is as skint as it first seems, with Ray managing to find the money for an expensive engagement ring from somewhere (\u201c\u00a3400 plus VAT\u201d, one of the gang notes). What will they all do once the electricity is switched back on? No-one talks about it.<\/p>\n Despite the obvious risks, unpleasant conditions and sometimes hostile weather, there is a romance to what they\u2019re doing. \u201cYou love being up here,\u201d Gerry tells Ray at the top of a pylon, and he admits it\u2019s true. \u201cI\u2019m king up here, lass.\u201d Throughout the film, the men sing traditional American folk songs and spirituals as they work. They\u2019re cowboys on the frontier, with the same just-outside-the-law freedom. When Ray and Gerry throw an engagement party in the local working men\u2019s club, everyone joins in with the line dancing.\u00a0<\/p>\n But there\u2019s only so much escapism available in Sheffield. The summer won\u2019t last forever. \u201cDon’t go enjoying yourself,\u201d an older member of the gang warns a young one, who\u2019s starting to get into the dancing. \u201cYou’ll only brood about it in years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n The main tension in the film is whether Ray and Gerry\u2019s relationship will work out, essentially a contest of wills between his settled ways and her roving ones. Coming in between them is Steve: Ray\u2019s younger, wilder friend, who shares Gerry\u2019s wanderlust and who she acknowledges is her more usual type. In life, Steve tells Gerry at one point, \u201cthere are goers and there are stayers\u201d. They are both goers; Ray is a stayer.\u00a0<\/p>\n Beaufoy\u2019s script was inspired by an aborted attempt to make a documentary about pylon painters in Wales, which he abandoned after being refused permission to shadow them. But he also drew from his own knowledge of climbing in Sheffield, which he deploys to great effect. The divide between Ray and the two younger people in the quasi-love triangle is mirrored by the kind of climbing they most prefer. In one of the film\u2019s most memorable scenes, Gerry and Steve take turns using their bouldering skills to move around the (now closed) Vine Inn in Sharrow without touching the floor. Ray, by contrast, is happier scaling vertically up and down the slabs of places like Froggatt Edge. Even when he climbs, he is still essentially staying in the same place.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Steve\u2019s wanderlust, the film suggests, is not quite of the same type as Gerry\u2019s. Though we\u2019re never told much about her background in Australia, it\u2019s clear she is travelling towards something \u2014 even if she\u2019s not quite sure what \u2014 whereas Steve wants to get away from South Yorkshire. \u201cThere\u2019s no shitty moors in Goa, I\u2019m telling you,\u201d he announces to the group, gleefully.<\/p>\n I\u2019m reminded of my interview with Bill Stephenson<\/a>, the photographer best known for documenting the city\u2019s working class in the 1980s and beyond, whose first project involved snapping shots of local beauty competitions. At first, he couldn\u2019t understand why the young women involved were putting themselves on display, until he realised the prize they were competing for was a modelling contract in London. \u201cThey wanted to win,\u201d he told me, \u201cto get out of a city that was then certainly in decline.\u201d<\/p>\n Among Giants\u2019 marketing was not wholly inaccurate \u2014 it is indeed the story of a dizzying, whirlwind romance. Beneath the surface, however, there is a vein of tragedy, one that also exists in The Full Monty, albeit more thoroughly concealed. In The Full Monty, the characters are out of work, but there is always the hope they will get some. In Among Giants, they have work, but it feels bizarrely pointless. As one man observes to his friend, they are painting the pylons grey, \u201cbut what colour would they be not painted?\u201d Also grey. At least from the ground, it\u2019s as if they\u2019ve not done anything at all. (Except one pylon, painted pink to celebrate the engagement \u2014 for which the film crew actually repainted a pylon outside Rochdale, which remained a curious local landmark until it was pulled down<\/a> in 2013.)<\/p>\n Even the film\u2019s central tension seems to go round in circles, with no clear resolution. Are you a stayer, or a goer? There seems to be no right choice. At one point, Gerry bemoans how boring her constant travels have become: \u201cmeeting one stranger after another, hearing all their stories and all the stories end up being the same story, about me and them having a shag\u201d. The more she moves, the more things stay the same. But, when she remarks how beautiful it is that Ray has his entire life to date spread out as a vista before him, his response is similarly mournful. \u201cI think they\u2019re going to knock it down soon,\u201d he says. The more he tries to hold on, the more everything insists on changing.<\/p>\n Though Beaufoy wrote the script for Among Giants before his big break with The Full Monty catapulted him to the screenwriter\u2019s version of stardom, it became an interesting prophecy of his own situation afterwards. The doors of Hollywood were suddenly flung open for him; Miramax bought the script for his third film, a comedy about hairdressers called Never Better, without even reading it. So would he stay, or would he go?\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/AD_4nXc2OZdnBsl1tBFHKHE-dt8Zb6a-2z2BQYRSw5WX_1ubpmAbTGz6zvpyfCciNf5SjwwO5YfHJdB43H54OxhJwPF1jsMceoUo.jpeg\")
Ray and other members of the \u2018pylon busters\u2019. Credit: Everett Collection Inc \/ Alamy Stock Photo.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/AD_4nXcohb8IVVy2pf58EDvrJDzpG4Sxq1JZuv5PulOPcO1K_wZvogcLci5EME0XN-QZ8rzF8q1K8zah9VS-QhtBdPHQP3BzOMbe.jpeg\")
Ray and Gerry dancing on the gas tank. Credit: RGR Collection \/ Alamy Stock Photo.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/AD_4nXeekpjhHoGIsgdNjE3i4pDBktLDgGfyM4gTburNnkZ3-aQUl1ZKickcghKXpOAMqUM8J232SWS1vz12hqrOKC8KQhQngae7.jpeg\")
Ray, Gerry and Steve outside the Fox & Duck in Tinsley. Credit: Cinematic \/ Alamy Stock Photo.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/AD_4nXftYNgbWxqJXmRzHlP1fim0Ym49gu_DkD0e40iYFYQ3-kVa08yz_wTbalwr9B2bISnTEG2eOT4-wJp6DnvVJwyU0XPw9Wm6.jpeg\")
Ray and Gerry. Credit: Moviestore Collection Ltd \/ Alamy Stock Photo.<\/p>\n