Feel-goodery with a stiff upper lip. A "redundant" Glasgow shipbuilder, still haunted by the drowning death of one of his sons thirty years ago, and protectively walled-off from his thirty-something surviving son, undertakes a secret six-month training program to swim the English Channel with nothing at stake but his self-worth. ("He's not going to achieve anything by it," sniffs the uncomprehending son when he finds out about it.) Peter Mullan has one of the great Common Man faces on the contemporary screen, blockish, pinched, intricately creased, and director Gaby Dellal fully appreciates it. The early depression, however, somehow carries more conviction than the later uplift. Brenda Blethyn, as the fretful wife who's in a secret training program of her own as a would-be city bus driver, appears to have had an expensive eye-widening operation, but is otherwise as common as you please. Billy Boyd, Ron Cook, Sean McGinley. (2005) — Duncan Shepherd
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