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The Legend of Barney Thomson

✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

Canada, United Kingdom, United States · 2015
1h 36m
Director Robert Carlyle
Starring Robert Carlyle, Emma Thompson, Ray Winstone, Ashley Jensen
Genre Comedy, Drama

Barney Thomson, an awkward Glasgow barber, lives a life of desperate mediocrity. However, his uninteresting life goes from 0 to 60 in five seconds, as he enters the dark and comically absurd world of a serial killer and attracts the suspicions of a London detective.

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What are critics saying?

83

Entertainment Weekly by

Ultimately, Barney Thomson’s roots are exposed too easily, and the question of “where’d they get that from?” often trumps our curiosity of where the film at hand is going, and that’s a problem.

60

Time Out London by Cath Clarke

There are more than a few false notes here.... Still, the sight of Emma Thompson, wearing old-lady prosthetics and a leopard skin coat as Barney’s mum...is not to be missed.

50

Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein

Despite the fertile concept, it's hard to care about, much less root for, the irritable, charisma-challenged Barney. The character never emerges as an effective hero or antihero, and performer Carlyle does little to mitigate that.

40

CineVue by Jamie Neish

The Legend of Barney Thomson has a few redeeming features scattered throughout, but for Carlyle it's much too bland and undefined.

50

The Hollywood Reporter by Neil Young

While the casting of Thompson, just two years Carlyle's senior is a gamble that could easily have seemed gimmicky, the half-Scottish Oscar-winner is a riot as the grotesque Cemolina, a raucously broad-accented, chain-smoking schemer resplendent in faux-ocelot

80

The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

Carlyle shoots the story with a propulsive, page-turning energy that’s enjoyably at odds with the Glasgow backdrop, which is dilapidated to the point of timelessness.

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