The
film begins with the main character Frank Redmond (Peter Mullan) clearing out
his office. After 28 years working for the same shipbuilder, the 55-year-old grandfather
of two finds himself laid off (or made redundant - as they say across the pond).
Without work for the first time that he can rightly remember, Frank is knocked
for a loop and really has no idea what to do with himself. His friends rally round
him (he’s a man’s man and has always been someone looked up to by his
mates and co-workers). Billy Boyd (Lord of the Rings) plays the loopy girl-crazy
Danny - on for plenty of comic relief. Ron Cook plays Norman a timid man beset
with myriad phobias, and Sean McGinley is his oldest friend, the cynical Eddie.
Try
as they may, they fail to offer Frank much comfort or direction. The four of them
regularly go for a swim and an off-handed remark gives Frank the most cockeyed
notion that’s entered his head in his entire life. Desperate to re-establish
his self confidence he starts thinking about swimming the English Channel. He
keeps it to himself for a while as he starts training in earnest and showing up
at the library to bone up on the whole subject. When his friends begin to figure
it out, they, of course, think he’s gone right ‘round, but they end
up getting swept up into the idea - particularly a friend who runs a fish and
chip shop Chan (Benedict Wong). Chan takes up the responsibility of learning all
there is to know about timing and the tides and so forth.
Aside
from his unemployment, Frank’s biggest problems are on the home front. Though
his marriage is far from loveless, there’s been a gulf growing there of late
and his keeping all these secrets is only putting more space between he and his
wife. What Frank doesn’t know is that his wife has been studying to become
a bus driver, and she fears that he’ll perceive this as her attempt to take
over the role of breadwinner - when in fact she began her training months before
he was laid off. The whole issue is compounded 10 fold by the fact that his son
Rob (Jamie Sives) is a stay-at-home Dad, watching over their two young boys while
his wife brings home the bacon working for the unemployment service.
Rob’s
decision to eschew a career for the time being has become a major bone of contention
between Father and Son and everyone walks around on egg shells any time the two
are around each other. This is really a terrific film, smart, sensitive, a lot
of good laughs, but I quite honestly have to knock it down a full grade for the
inclusion of the biggest sentimental cliché of all time. Even though it
is feathered well into the story and comes into play nicely during the Channel
swim. It turns out that Rob had a brother who had drown about the time the boys
were at the same age as Frank’s Grand children are now. Obviously father
and son rarely speak of it and when they do it’s used to hurt each other.
Both imagine that the other secretly blames him for the tragedy. It’s not
that the plot-point isn’t knitted well into the story, I guess it’s
just a scenario that we’ve seen in various permutations too many times before.
Other than this and a few minor quibbles toward the end, however, I really enjoyed
this film.
Blethyn
is perfect as the Mother caught in the cross-fire of everyone’s troubles
and injured feelings. She’s still crazy about her deeply principled man,
who has kept his rugged muscularity and strong-jawed good-looks well into middle
age. Her problems begin to mount as she continues to fail the field tests necessary
to get her bus drivers license and only has one chance left. One night things
come to a head when they both confront each other about the secrets they’ve
kept from each other and the resultant row leaves a dark shadow over them both.
Frank is so shaken that he calls together his friends (who have really come together
as “team Frank” - it’s infused a sense of purpose in all of them
so imagine their displeasure when he tells them all that he’s decided to
call it all off.
One
part of the film that flirts with being a bit too manipulative, involves a group
of handicapped kids who occasionally show up at the pool while Frank is training.
One boy in particular is terribly gripped by Palsy, so much so that he can barely
walk the few feet from his wheel chair to the edge of the pool. Once he dives
in, his daily goal is to swim the length of the pool one time and given his desperately
unorthodox technique it is all he can do to make it. But each day he manages and
lets go a good whoop like he’d just won the Olympic gold. Frank befriends
the boy and one day the kid asks him why he’s not training like usual and
the look on his face when Frank confesses his decision to give up, is the one
thing that could cause Frank to change his mind and that he does.
The
rest of the film plays out about like you would imagine, except for one twist
at the end that really ratchets up the emotional impact. During the course of
the film we learn that each of the men involved in the Channel Swim are wrestling
with their own little problems and the way they are all tied up in a neat bow
the day they learn that Frank has decided to resume his big swim is a bit of a
pat device that along with the drowning backstory made things a bit too corny
and sentimental, but certainly wasn’t enough to put to big a dent in my enthusiasm
for this film.
