The Legend of Barney Thomson

[projekktor id=’23305′]

The Legend of Barney Thomson is the directorial debut of Scottish actor Robert Carlyle. The film premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last June and was released in the U.K. last July. Carlyle stars alongside Emma Thompson, Ray Winstone, Ashley Jensen, and Brian Pettifer.

In THE LEGEND OF BARNEY THOMSON, Carlyle plays the titular Thomson, a downtrodden Glaswegian barber who inadvertently stumbles into serial murder, with both absurd and macabre consequences. Complicating matters further, Barney’s formidable mother Cemolina (Emma Thompson in an unprecedented turn) cheerfully emasculates him at every turn, causing an outrageously bloody chain of events. While Barney clumsily tries to cover his tracks, Glasgow police inspector Holdall (Winstone) fights his own battles within his inept homicide department as he tries to solve the crime of the century. A black comedy of errors unfolds as the police try to capture the murderer at large.

In an interview with the Herald Scotland Carlyle admits he almost walked away from the film after being asked to direct it. “The more I thought about it,” he says, “the more I realised, ‘Well, I know this quite well by now. I’ve actually done a director’s job on this, up to this point, so will it be easy enough for me to step in front of the camera at the same time?’ At the end, I just took a deep breath and thought, ‘You might never get another chance to do this, so whether it’s going to be difficult or not, give it a go.’”

The Legend of Barney Thomson is rated 14A.