The Angel's Share

One of The Angel's Share's claims to fame is that it's directed by Ken Loach, who is famous for gritty films with kitchen sink realism. There's a chance that grit and realism might not be what you're looking for in your evening's entertainment and so this might put you off and I do hope this isn't the case. Like Looking for Eric, (a film we both loved, also directed by Ken Loach),  The Angel's Share mixes grit with humour and charm and a slightly fanciful feel-good story.

Our story is set in Glasgow and features Robbie, a slight but good-looking troubled youth with a pregnant girlfriend who narrowly avoids going to jail at the opening of the film.He leads a somewhat desperate existence, plagued by beatings from some life-long rivals and his girlfriend's relatives who are less than keen on  the relationship. He's sentenced to community service and so makes the acquaintance of Harry the supervisor and Rhino, Albert and Mo, who are similarly troubled youths.

Harry gives Robbie a ride to the hospital when his son is born and then takes him home for a celebratory whisky afterwards. Robbie's appreciation of the subtleties of whisky inspire Harry to take him (and in fact the rest of the community service crew) to a  distillery and later to a formal whisky tasting. Robbie comes up with a cunning plan to steal some of a very rare single malt from an isolated distillery and  sell it to solve his financial woes. He conscripts Rhino, Albert and Mo to help him and the next part of the film is reminiscent of a Famous Five adventure with Scottish accents - it only lacks Timmy the dog. This is not a criticism - this is all rollicking good fun although the jolly life-affirming stuff is tempered with doses of violence.

You'll have to concentrate to make sure you catch all the dialogue which is delivered with broad Scottish accents and you'll have to be comfortable with plenty of four letter words but it's all worthwhile and the happy ending is most satisfactory

Anne's rating 4.5/5 Ian's rating 4/5