To start with a general comment that the acting varied from very good to poor, with the female actresses being much better than the males, especially Tanya Fear and Edith Glad, with a special mention for Stephanie Beecham who played her small and isolated part to perfection.
The film started with rolling out every hackneyed cliche about the Scottish highlands that could be found, with stilted dialogue and run of the mill direction, saved only by the cinematography displaying the stunning scenery to full effect. I assume that this was for scene setting but it did little to establish character.
The film gained pace with the introduction of Stephanie Beecham as a hard nosed lawyer and it improved when Tanya Fear as Heather became a more important part of the story, although the (again) cliched relationship between her and Geordie was ridiculous and unbelievable with the apparent age difference and speed of development. Unfortunately the role of Alice was smaller than it needed to be to display the talents of Edith Glad fully, but she played the part with conviction and realism.
Of the male actors, John Michie as Jimmy stood head and shoulders above the rest who seemed to retreat into their stereotypical characters with zero nuance and some ridiculous set pieces which can only be put down to poor writing and direction (e.g. The sword scene).
The introduction of Don Johnson (Gary Grant) may have been an attempt at humour, but missed the mark and he seemed superfluous to the plot, so no criticism of his acting at all.
However, once the characters had something to do and the plot kicked in, the film improved vastly with a decent pace and some genuinely funny moments moving towards a quite fun, genuinely humorous and well directed denouement.
In summary, a poor opening that had me looking at my watch to see how much longer I had to endure, followed by a quite entertaining story with a reasonable conclusion.
The film started with rolling out every hackneyed cliche about the Scottish highlands that could be found, with stilted dialogue and run of the mill direction, saved only by the cinematography displaying the stunning scenery to full effect. I assume that this was for scene setting but it did little to establish character.
The film gained pace with the introduction of Stephanie Beecham as a hard nosed lawyer and it improved when Tanya Fear as Heather became a more important part of the story, although the (again) cliched relationship between her and Geordie was ridiculous and unbelievable with the apparent age difference and speed of development. Unfortunately the role of Alice was smaller than it needed to be to display the talents of Edith Glad fully, but she played the part with conviction and realism.
Of the male actors, John Michie as Jimmy stood head and shoulders above the rest who seemed to retreat into their stereotypical characters with zero nuance and some ridiculous set pieces which can only be put down to poor writing and direction (e.g. The sword scene).
The introduction of Don Johnson (Gary Grant) may have been an attempt at humour, but missed the mark and he seemed superfluous to the plot, so no criticism of his acting at all.
However, once the characters had something to do and the plot kicked in, the film improved vastly with a decent pace and some genuinely funny moments moving towards a quite fun, genuinely humorous and well directed denouement.
In summary, a poor opening that had me looking at my watch to see how much longer I had to endure, followed by a quite entertaining story with a reasonable conclusion.
