Glenrothan Review – Alan Cumming returns home in Brian Cox’s big brother drama | film

FOr his directorial debut, Brian Cox paints in very broad strokes and primary colours; Glenrothan is an emotional comedy-drama from screenwriter David Ashton about the turbulent reunion of two brothers in Scotland. It can be a bit dank, and at times resembles the comfort food shown on TV on a Sunday night, but the big picture will draw you in, and there are certainly some great panoramic shots of the highlands.

Cox himself plays Sandy, the enthusiastic head of a highly profitable family-owned distillery that provides jobs to the entire area, and is run by the highly efficient Jess (Shirley Henderson). Sandy actually inherited the job from his late father, a strict disciplinarian remembered in harrowing flashback scenes – for the role, Brian Cox playfully cast his son Alan Cox.

In poor health, Sandy sends an angry, pathetic letter to his long-estranged younger brother Donal (Alan Cumming), asking him to come back for a visit. Donal lives in Chicago and runs a blues bar with his daughter, Amy (Alexandra Shipp); Donal was once a rebel who had quarreled bitterly with their father about the old man’s cruelty to their mother, and he left their village as a young man and swore never to return; This left Sandy dealing with the fallout, and broke the heart of Jess, who was then his girlfriend. But his blues band is having trouble, and Donal thinks it’s time to take that sentimental trip to Scotland with Amy and his granddaughter Sasha (Alexandra Wilkie).

As for Sandy himself, he had always known that Donal was in fact the greatest connoisseur of whisky, and had the best knowledge of it; Sandy has to think about what will happen to the family business, so it’s a matter of… yes… succession. Inevitably, the whiskey mogul will be compared to the media mogul Cox played on HBO’s Jesse Armstrong, although that’s much nicer. There are some lovely moments: Sandy’s disgust at the terrible porridge Donal is trying to make, Donal’s startled discovery upon returning to the family home that his old bedroom remains exactly as it was when he left, Buzzcocks posters and all.