Susan Granger’s review of “The Angels’ Share” (Sundance Selects)
If you’re looking for a comedy caper movie, set in working-class Glasgow, Scotland, consider Ken Loach’s “The Angels’ Share.” It’s all about malt whisky – and the title derives from the small amount of liquid that naturally evaporates while it ages over time in the barrel cask, as part of the maturing process.
Caught in the hopelessly destructive cycle of poverty, criminality and violence, Robbie (newcomer Paul Brannigan), is a local hoodlum with a strait-laced girlfriend, Leonie (Siobban Reilly), and an infant son. When he’s spared from prison by a kindly Judge and given 300 hours of “community payback,” his work supervisor, Harry (John Henshaw), who enjoys his nightly tipple, decides to take him and some other hooligans on an outing to a rural whisky distillery. That’s where Robbie not only learns about the whisky-making process but also discovers that he has a connoisseur’s nose for identifying different varieties of the nectar. His olfactory skill catches the attention of Thaddeus (Roger Allam), a slick high-end broker, and earns the respect of whisky professional Rory MCAllister (real-life scotch expert Charlie Maclean). At another distillery, an auction of an extremely rare cask of Malt Mill whiskey is rapidly approaching with a million-dollar payout expected. Nefarious schemes are brewing. Mustering his three fellow Glaswegian hooligans, volatile Robbie heads for the Scottish Highlands to stage an unlikely heist.
Scripted by lawyer-turned-screenwriter Paul Laverty and directed by Ken Loach (“Sweet Sixteen,” “My Name is Joe,” “Looking for Eric,” “Kes”), it’s by far the most amusing movie 76 year-old Loach has ever made, and it’s obvious why it won the Jury Prize at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. The only problem is: the thick Scottish accents are undecipherable without the English subtitles.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Angels’ Share” is a sweet-natured, high-spirited 7, a fanciful fable with a wee dash of magical realism.
