REVIEW: Glenrothan - simmering resentment and a gush of sentimentality...

We stashed away a posh bottle of wine for years waiting for our son’s 18th birthday. When the birthday came, the wine was pretty undrinkable.

And Glenrothan, after months of trailers which made it seem so promising, feels pretty much the same. The best bits are in the trailer, and the rest feels oddly flat and strangely disappointing now it’s here.

In his directorial debut, Brian Cox plays Sandy, the brother who stayed behind to run the family distillery. Donal (Alan Cumming) was the brother with the better nose for whisky, but 40 years ago, after a catastrophic falling out with their appalling father, he was the one who ran away, storming out, seemingly never to return.

His daughter and granddaughter – Amy (Alexandra Shipp) and Sasha (Alexandra Wilkie) – have kept in touch with Sandy and have even visited, but Donal, seeing himself as much more a “song and dance man” than a businessman, devoted himself to his Chicago blues club.

But then four things coincide: Sandy is facing health concerns; the distillery is about to celebrate 200 years; Sandy writes to Donal; and Donal’s club burns down. It’s all enough finally to bring Donal back to Scotland, accompanied by his next two generations.

But the past is devilishly difficult to overcome – particularly when you are dealing with exceptionally stubborn people almost drowning in their own resentment.

The character of Donal needed to come with considerably more charm for this film to work. Instead, there is precious little to draw you to him.

Sandy is evidently the more vulnerable of the two, but both of them find it horribly difficult to re-establish anything like a working relationship. They parted with fisticuffs 40 years before; and that’s where they are heading once again.

There is fury all around, and Jess (Shirley Henderson), the girl Donal abandoned all those years ago, stokes it endlessly. She’s now effectively running the business and doing so with furious efficiency. Anger is everywhere – and it’s rather dull to watch. It’s not an anger which sparks the film into life – again, because these are characters we struggle to care for.

All of which makes the sentimentality of the ending all the more difficult to take. It’s been a terrific year at the cinema so far, with plenty of brilliant films. This is most definitely not one of them. There is self-indulgence in the characters – and self-indulgence in the film-making too.