Barney Thomson | Review

Demon Bumbler: Carlyle’s Serial Killer Comedy Hit or Miss

Actor Robert Carlyle directs his feature debut Barney Thomson from a first-time screenplay by producer and AD Richard Cowan, an adaptation of novel by Douglas Lindsay. Released in the UK last year with The Legend of appearing as part of the title, the US release divorces itself from such a lofty claim, reducing it instead to merely the name of its title character, hoping the star wattage of supporting players such as Emma Thompson and Ray Winstone will drive audiences to the film. A Glasgow set serial killer comedy, mild comparisons to another famed murderous barber, Sweeney Todd, the famed demon of Fleet Street, are completely superficial. Mildly amusing, Carlyle squanders the film’s focus, allowing his more flamboyant co-stars to score more perversely entertaining heights.

Opportunity has yet to present itself to the continually downtrodden Barney Thomson (Carlyle), a barber struggling to attract clients to his chair in a Glasgow business run by Wullie (Stephen McCole), an established he recently inherited from his father (James Cosmo). But Barney is prone to violent outbursts, which doesn’t further his cause, and Wullie decides it’s time for them to part ways. But when Wullie approaches him, Barney accidentally kills his boss in the ensuing scuffle. Rather than alert the authorities, he hides the body at his mother Cemolina’s (Emma Thompson), a vulgar, bingo playing broad who decides the best course of action is to dismember the corpse and deposit random body parts on her frequent trips with her gal pals. Soon, the police are nosing around, while Wullie’s other employees begin to suspect Barney’s behavior.

If there’s any real reason to champion the lifelessly titled Barney Thomson (the hobbled appellation of the novel’s dark promise of The Midnight of, while the UK’s version conjures confusing associations with everything from Sleepy Hollow to Bagger Vance) it’s for one of Emma Thompson’s most enjoyable performances in years.

The crass, imaginatively named Cemolina finds the actor bedazzled with padded hips, a working class frump wig, and an aged advanced visage to make her believably appear old enough as Carlyle’s mother (in truth, she’s only about three years his senior). Imagine the cockney Janet persona of Marlene Dietrich in Witness for the Prosecution (1957) and you get an idea of Thompson’s surly verve, a character who has considerable secrets of her own (and by the end, Barney Thomson would have been more interesting if Cemolina had been the focus). Ray Winstone plays a frustrated inspector continually usurped by his over-the-top female superior (a cartoonish but comical Ashley Jensen, the Biscuit Woman from Lanthimos’ satire The Lobster), which results in yet another subplot outshining the core narrative (with some brief but wonderful assistance from Tom Courtnenay as Chief Superintendent) while James Cosmo and Martin Compston get swept under the drab rug of the barbershop sequences.

At times perversely funny, Carlyle never hits the juicy jugular of Barney Thomson, and Fabien Wagner’s dreary lensing of a down-and-out Glasgow, while tonally appropriate, feels designed for television. Had Carlyle labored to make his debut (and his character) a bit more of a degenerate, this might have been more salaciously entertaining. But presented as a victim of his environment and circumstance, he’s a bit of an inconsequential dullard.

★★½/☆☆☆☆☆