The Legend Of Barney Thomson

An adaptation of Douglas Lindsay’s novel The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson, the first of seven in a series, Robert Carlyle’s directorial debut mixes the macabre with the gags for an entertaining if at times uneven comedy thriller.

Carlyle plays the eponymous character, a Glasgow barber who likes to keep to himself. The job might pay pittance but it’s all he’s got and when he’s told he’s going to be let go his pleading turns into a tussle with his boss which leads to a fall and Barney’s scissors in his boss’ chest. Yikes. Barney goes about covering up the murder and ropes in rough mum (Thompson) to help dispose of the body. Meanwhile Ray Winstone is the cockney detective struggling to adjust to life up north. He’s under pressure to solve a serial murder case involving body parts being mailed to the victims’ families. Are the two stories linked? Kind of but not in the way anyone would expect...

Carlyle gets his reference to Sweeney Todd in before anyone else can, and while that’s the first thing one thinks of, The Legend of Barney Thomson leans more on the darkly comic Coen Brothers, Shallow Grave and Big Nothing than Sondheim’s musical. Carlyle’s attempts to slip between comedy and gruesome murder have varying degrees of success.

But his henpecked nice guy killer, with his slicked back hair and unimposing frame, makes for an interesting character, and while Winstone’s blowhard is full of bluster, the film belongs to Emma Thompson. Almost unrecognisable behind the wrinkles, strong Glaswegian accent, and dense fog of cigarette smoke, Thompson’s rough pensioner sticks in the memory. It is a stretch, however, to believe that she’s Carlyle’s mother here - even with the makeup it doesn’t look like there’s more of an age gap than there really is (fifty-six-year-old Thompson is only two years Carlyle’s senior).

When the story moves away from this unlikely and engaging duo and gets into the muddy subplot of Winstone and Ashley Jensen, Winstone’s colleague looking to usurp his role in the investigation, the movie loses something. These scenes are too forced, too shouty, too much.