On a Clear Day

Made redundant from the Glasgow shipyard where he has worked for 36 years, Frank (Mullan) flails about aimlessly seeking a purpose in life. Then, on a booze cruise to France, Frank decides he's going to swim the English Channel: not only will it give his life some meaning, it might also help to exorcise the death of the son who drowned some 30 years before. With the aid of a motley crew of friends (chief among them McGinley, as Frank's best pal Eddie), Frank goes into training. Directed by debutant Gaby Dellal, this is a kitchen-sink drama reminiscent of a soft-focus Mike Leigh or Ken Loach. Frank starts out as a sullen, withdrawn rebel without a cause, and the film appears to be a hard-hitting one-man-against-the-system diatribe. Unfortunately, it soon settles into something cosier, as everyone involved tucks into the slipstream of Frank's mid-life crisis in order to surmount their own emotional hurdles. "Things aren't made to be fixed these days," Frank observes at one point as Eddie fails to repair a mobile phone, setting up the context in which each character comes to define their own self-worth. But while Frank is referring to people being prematurely tossed onto the scrapheap, he could just as easily be making ironic comment on Alex Rose's script, which contrives minor obstacles for each character to overcome in order to create a feel-good payoff at the end. Mullan is as compulsively watchable as always and McGinley provides strong support, but this gentle comedy is a by-the-numbers exercise in conflict resolution.