For his directorial debut, Brian Cox paints with broad strokes and primary colors; Glenrothan is a sentimental comedy-drama from screenwriter David Ashton about the troubled reunion of two brothers in Scotland. It may be a little corny, at times resembling Sunday-night TV comfort food, but this big-hearted picture wins you over, and there are certainly some wonderful panoramic shots of the Highlands.
Cox himself plays Sandy, the grim boss of a hugely profitable family-run distillery that provides employment for the entire town and is run by the fiercely competent Jess (Shirley Henderson). Sandy actually inherited the job from his late father, a strict disciplinarian remembered in traumatized flashback scenes: Brian Cox jokingly cast his son Alan Cox for the role.
In failing health, Sandy sends a sullen yet compassionate letter to her long-estranged younger brother Donal (Alan Cumming), asking him to return for a visit. Donal lives in Chicago and runs a blues bar with his daughter Amy (Alexandra Shipp); Donal was once the rebel who fought fiercely with his father over his cruelty to his mother, left the village as a young man, and vowed never to return; this left Sandy to deal with the consequences and broke the heart of Jess, his then-girlfriend. But his blues bar is in trouble, and Donal feels the time is ripe to embark on this sentimental journey back to Scotland with Amy and his niece Sasha (Alexandra Wilkie).
As for Sandy, she’d always known that Donal was actually the greater whisky connoisseur, and with a better nose; Sandy has to consider what will become of the family business, so it’s a question of… yes… succession. Inevitably, the whisky magnate will be compared to the media mogul Cox played in Jesse Armstrong’s HBO hit, though this one is much kinder. There are some lovely moments: Sandy’s disgust at the terrible porridge Donal tries to make, and Donal’s astonished discovery, upon returning to the family home, that his old bedroom has been kept exactly as it was when he left, Buzzcocks posters and all.
