A slight, dated and punishingly predictable offering
Rory’s Way (M, 109 mins) Directed by Oded Binnun and Mihal Brezis Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★1⁄2
On a wild and preposterously attractive piece of Scottish coastline, quite possibly still recovering from the influx of tourists that followed 1983’s Local
Hero, there lives a cantankerous old bugger by the name of Rory.
Rory talks little, whittles in the
local pub, and occasionally threatens knife violence against a bloke known only as Campbell, for some misdeed in a past so murky and misremembered it may actually not even have occurred during either of the men’s lifetimes.
Then Rory gets a diagnosis – from his vet, because that’s the sort of detail we like in our films about cantankerous old coots – that the literal pain in his back might be something far, far worse than Rory is maintaining. At that point, Rory leaves for San Francisco, to see the son he hasn’t talked to in years, meet his daughter-in-law and her family, and possibly form a bond with his infant grandson that will offer a skerrick of redemption and hope to Rory’s autumn days.
If that sounds to you like exactly the sort of sentimental, wildly cliched and startlingly photogenic tosh that will inspire you to buy a ticket and enjoy some grizzled laughs at the expense of modern parenting, Americans in general and what passes for art and food these days, then have at it.
Because Rory’s Way is precisely that film. Helping the cause immensely is Brian Cox, looking, as always, to have been assembled out of rubble and moss, and put on this Earth to do nothing else but play irascible and vaguely threatening old fogeys until the stars fall from the sky.
Around Cox, Rosanna Arquette turns up as a love interest for Rory and carries off a potentially awful role with wit and dignity. JJ Field – looking spookily like he has been assembled out of the bits left over from making Tom Hiddleston – gives as good as he gets as Rory’s estranged son. Thora Birch also rises above some less-thangenerous writing as the daughterin-law, managing parenting and a high-flown career in the face of Rory’s shouldn’t-you-be-in-thekitchen dinosaurisms.
Rory’s Way is based on the novel, The Etruscan Smile, which I haven’t read. I do know, however, that the story was originally set in Southern Italy and Milan.
Rory’s Way is a slight, dated and punishingly predictable film. It is also extraordinarily beautiful to look at, winningly performed and doesn’t outstay its welcome by a second. I didn’t exactly enjoy it, but I respected it from beginning to end.