{"id":417381,"date":"2025-09-12T02:56:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T02:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/417381\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T02:56:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T02:56:15","slug":"brian-cox-directs-scottish-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/417381\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian Cox Directs Scottish Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you would like to spend time watching Alan Cumming traipse around the Scottish Highlands, I would recommend any season of \u201cThe Traitors\u201d on Peacock<\/a> over the Toronto International Film<\/a> Festival premiere \u201cGlenrothan<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0One of these things has intrigue, murder, thrilling cinematography, and fabulous costumes. The other has a flat script and the tenor of a Hallmark movie. It\u2019s the latter that happens to be getting a glitzy premiere here in Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is not just my half-hearted plea for a major cinematic institution to program a \u201cTraitors\u201d marathon. (Put Gabby Windey on a jury! That would be fun!) It\u2019s also a dig at \u201cGlenrothan,\u201d a waste of a talented cast, including Brian Cox<\/a>, who pulls double duty as director.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Barrio<\/a> \"A<\/a> <\/p>\n

In fact, it is because of the promise of Cox stepping behind the camera that eyes are on \u201cGlenrothan\u201d at TIFF<\/a>, but the venerated performer brings none of the bite of his best performances to this task. One would think a man now most famous for bellowing \u201cfuck off\u201d on \u201cSuccession\u201d<\/a> might have chosen a project with a bit more edge. Instead, \u201cGlenrothan\u201d is a surface-level tale of family drama that isn\u2019t all that dramatic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cox plays Sandy Nairn, the CEO of his family\u2019s prestigious whiskey company in the pristine village of Glenrothan surrounded by rolling green hills. After a blast of discordantly jaunty music, the film opens with Sandy\u2019s voice dictating a letter to his estranged brother Donal (Cumming), encouraging him to return to his homeland. Sandy\u2019s health is failing and he wants to see his kin. Donal, a nightclub owner in Chicago obsessed with the blues, has resisted going back to the land of lochs for reasons that will become only somewhat clear over the course of the run time. Plus, he\u2019s having too much fun singing \u201cOne Meat Ball\u201d to an enthusiastic audience.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Donal eventually relents, however, after his venue burns down in a convenient plot device. So he joins his daughter Amy (Alexandra Shipp) and her young child on their trip. These two visit Sandy regularly, having seemingly established a very close relationship with him despite the fact that Donal has been out of contact for the duration of Amy\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

\u201cGlenrothan\u201d is full of puzzling details like these, in which it seems like the script by David Ashton is just finding lazy ways to get its characters all into the same place. There\u2019s a clunkiness that pervades the entire enterprise. The dialogue is particularly wooden and the actors struggle through mixed metaphors like, \u201cBe careful on time, it can creep up on you like a shitstorm.\u201d That line is spoken by Cumming with zero irony.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The reasons why Donal has avoided this gorgeous place all of these years is teased out over a series of heavy-handed flashbacks where we learn, essentially, that his father was hard on him and he was very close to his mother, who died. There is no shocking trauma in Donal\u2019s past, just a father who put a lot of pressure on him. It all makes his behavior seem petulant rather than rooted in some great pain. Not that the townspeople, who treat him like some sort of true pariah, are much better.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All the principal actors in the cast appear lost. Shipp is tasked with scolding her father and delivering leaden exposition. Cumming truly only comes alive when he\u2019s singing. Blessedly, there are a couple of moments when the natural showman gets to croon and they are the most enjoyable. Otherwise, Cumming has to externalize all of Donal\u2019s feelings, as the screenplay has him speaking out loud to himself instead of letting him show his strife. Perhaps the performer done dirtiest is Mike Leigh and Kelly Reichardt veteran Shirley Henderson, playing Donal\u2019s former best friend and Sandy\u2019s now right hand. Too often her character requires her to fall into hysterics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Perhaps most confusing is Cox\u2019s apparent disinterest in his part, considering he is the one that chose this material. Maybe he was relishing the chance to play someone with far more warmth than Logan Roy, but Sandy is just a vaguely nice guy who Donal resented for many years for reasons that are unclear. Cox at least gets to sneer the word \u201cwastrel\u201d at some point \u2014 the only beat where you see a hint of what makes him usually such a thrilling presence. (He also farts. So there\u2019s that.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a director Cox also seems lost. During a sequence in which Donal starts jamming with a band at the local pub, Cox doesn\u2019t know where to place the camera, quick cutting between fingers playing instruments in a harried fashion. Elsewhere the action is statically staged. Cinematographer Jaime Ackroyd certainly captures Scotland\u2019s majesty, but there is no character to the frames, which look like they could be plucked out of a commercial from a tourism bureau.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By the end of the lugubrious 97 minutes any issues the Nairn family had \u2014 as undeveloped as they are \u2014 are neatly resolved. There\u2019s far more humanity in display in an episode of \u201cThe Traitors.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGlenrothan\u201d premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.<\/p>\n

Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film reviews<\/a><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and critical thoughts? Subscribe here<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014\u00a0all only available to subscribers.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you would like to spend time watching Alan Cumming traipse around the Scottish Highlands, I would recommend…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[143007,77,10841,3063,143008,3943,6082,107760,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-417381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-brian-cox","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-festivals","11":"tag-film","12":"tag-glenrothan","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-reviews","15":"tag-tiff","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115189080836047389","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}