By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Ken Loach
Starring: Gary Maitland | John Henshaw | Paul Brannigan | Scott Kyle | Siobhan Reilly | William Ruane
Country: belgium, france, italy, united_kingdom
Year: 2013
Running time: 101
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1924394/combine
Jeff says: “Ken Loach takes a page from the Bill Forsyth playbook in this small story of redemption.
“We first meet Robbie (Paul Brannigan) in a Glasgow courtroom listening to a solicitor argue before the judge that despite his thuggish history, he has, since his last release from prison, built a solid relationship with his girlfriend, Leonie (Siobhan Reilly), and he will be a father within the next ten days. This turnabout, the solicitor argues, means Robbie should not be sent back to prison, but should be given the chance to prove he is reformed (that Leonie is sitting next to Robbie in the courtroom may mark the solicitor as cagey). The judge lets him off with a stern lecture and three hundred hours community service. His sentence puts Robbie under the care of Harry (John Henshaw), a community service supervisor, and casts him in with a group of Forsythian miscreants.
“Harry is a rotund, avuncular and kind man who doesn’t mind bending the rules a little to keep his charges under his care. Compared with Robbie, his fellows are more wayward than they are sinister, and with their support, with Harry’s and Leonie’s, and with the birth of his own son, Robbie begins to come around. Of course, as in any Ken Loach film, society has stacked the deck against someone like Robbie, and so his path to redemption will not be smooth. Siobhan’s family despises him to the point of violence, he’s pursued by a vicious gangster bent on revenge, and, in a harrowing scene, Robbie must confront the consequences of his former brutality.
“Harry, a connoisseur of Scotch whiskey, provides the vehicle by which Robbie will pull through, and in the latter half, Loach introduces a caper involving a cask of legendary single malt that propels the movie to a rousing, if somewhat fantastical, ending. Because THE ANGELS’ SHARE marks itself as a comedy from the very first scene, we havelittle doubt how the story will end. The pleasure lies in getting there. Subtitled for us non-Glaswegians (I put that in just so I could say ‘Glaswegian’). Netflix instant watch, my living room. 4 cats”