Rob Roy

Year:  1995

Filming:  Color

Length:  139 minutes

Genre:  Action/Adventure/Biography/Drama/Swashbuckler

Maturity:  R (for violence, sexuality, and language)

Cast:  Liam Neeson (Rob Roy MacGregor), Jessica Lange (Mary MacGregor), Tim Roth (Archibald Cunningham), John Hurt (Marquis of Montrose), Andrew Keir (Earl of Argyll), Brian McCardie (Alasdair MacGregor), Brian Cox (Killearn), Eric Stoltz (Alan MacDonald)

Director: Michael Caton-Jones

Personal Rating:  1 Star

***

    Trash. Pure, unadulterated trash. That’s the general description for most of this big-budget, sex-saturated action flick set in the rugged Scottish Highlands. Instead of getting an accurate portrayal the early 18^th century social and political strata, or even a decent romanticized adaptation of the legend of Rob Roy, we get sensationalist filth, visually and verbally, combined with creepy characters and a confusing plot-line.

    The film opens in 1713, on the First Jacobite Rebellion, even though this historical event is skimmed over entirely. The first time we meet our anti-hero, Rob Roy MacGregor, starring Liam Neeson, he is brutally stabbing a cattle thief for the Marquis of Montrose. The next time we see him he is lacking the proper garmentry of civilized society and going for the plunge in the lake, followed up by his hopping into bed thusly with his wife, Mary, who says, pleasantly, she’s just been dreaming about being “ravaged” by a silkie….yeah, delightful couple.

    But if they’re weird, there’s worse to come. Enter the Marquis of Montrose himself, a noble sneaky rat, along with the ever-detestable Archibald Cunningham. “Archie”, as he is fondly called, is a perverted, sadistic, narcissistic, and very well dressed English dandy who also has quite a way with the sword. And he’s quite short, too, but the little creep tops everyone in the area of disgusting vulgarity in word and deed. We also get to meet the Duke of Argyll, who is at odds with Montrose and in danger of being framed as a Jacobite.  

    Cut to Rob deciding he doesn’t want to be a bounty hunter anymore and making a decision to borrow money from Montrose to buy his own heard of cattle. Montrose, ever the gentleman, agrees and then rigs a plot whereby Archie will kill Alan MacDonald, the clansmen carrying the cash back to Rob, steal it back for the Marquis, and then make it look like MacDonald has skipped town and took a ship to America with the money. It works beautifully.

    Now Montrose springs the second part of his trap, and demands that Rob Roy testify against the Duke of Argyll and say that he is a Jacobite. If he does not, the Marquis continues, he will hold the loss of the money against him and his clan. Why a commoner’s testimony against a nobleman would make or break anything is a bit of a mystery, but Rob finally starts revealing his noble side and refuses to do so. After briefly holding Archie hostage so the Marquis can’t set the guards on him, he and the men of the clan take to the hills.

    Archie-the-Evil is sent to get Rob with his redcoated troops. But since Rob is long gone, he decides to take the liberty of burning his home, slaughtering his livestock, and even defiling his wife. Rob’s brother, Alasdair, finds out what happened, but Mary swears the lad to secrecy. She even stabs Killearn, a hireling of Montrose, when he threatens to tell on her. Nevertheless, the news gets out when Alasdair is mortally wounded, and he confides to Rob the true story. Rob, as predicted, goes bats and attacks troopers on horseback.

    Also as predicted, he is captured, and Cunningham prepares to hang Rob over a bridge. But our anti-hero manages to flip himself backwards and almost strangle his captor with the rope before falling into the river and tumbling over a waterfall. Yes, he survives. No, we don’t know how. Professional secret. Anyway, he gets home and finds out that Mary is pregnant, presumably with Archie’s child. But to his credit, Rob takes it on the chin and says that he will be a father to the baby and they’ll start with a clean slate.

    Now his main goal is annihilate Archie via a public duel. The only problem is, as we have mentioned, Archie is a pretty good little fencer. The Duke of Argyll, who has finally found out that Rob refused to perjure him, promises to take care of the Highlander’s debts, but doesn’t hold out much hope for him in this upcoming fight. And his instinct proves to be basically correct, since Rob gets trounced by Cunningham, and our villain doesn’t even play dirty!

    No, Archie wins fair and square…but Rob is somehow able to cheat fate by prying his opponent’s blade away from his throat (why don’t more people manage that in the movies?) and skewering him then and there. No one really mourns the late rat, including Rob who hurries home to enjoy a well-deserved smooch with Mary in a sun-drenched field. But I must admit that a slight sigh escaped me at having to watch Archie’s nice duds get impaled along with him. Ah, the fortunes of Hollywood costuming.

    More than almost any film I’ve viewed, Rob Roy is a shiny apple that’s rotten on the inside. There are impressive scenery shots, elegant costuming, and a traditional music score by Capercallie. There is also some interesting cinematic artistry exercised, especially in the scene which flashes back-and-forth between Archie chasing MacDonald on horseback and the celebration being held nearby where pulse-pounding reels are being played. Immediately after, the Gaelic lament “Allein Duinn” is sung at the celebration (even though it was written over 60 years after the events depicted) at the same time as Cunningham is stabbing MacDonald in the woods. Another nice sequence involves Archie, decked out his military splendor, leading his red-coated columns out to capture Rob Roy, accompanied by the tune “O’Sullivan’s March.”

    But the picture reaches new lows in the area of unnecessary vulgarity and brutality, earning its R rating to the hilt, and doesn’t have a deep enough plot to bring any substantial meaning out of the mess. It’s as if the script writer were trying to beat some sort of record with regards to how much sexual slang and how many stabbings could be stuffed into a 2 hour production. There was really no way of getting around it easily, even though I did use the fast-forward button repeatedly.

    The characters’ general comportment, unfortunately, match their choice of linguistics. Rob and Mary MacGregor may be married, but there evident obsession with each other as lovers is a cheap substitute for deeper emotions rarely brought out in this film. I’m heartily sick of those two making out (and I mean way out) almost every time they make an appearance together on screen. I mean, come on, do we really need to see this? Don’t they have any other hobbies as a couple fit for public exhibition? Can’t they just enjoy a walk in the woods or a picnic by the lake without having to send the kiddies away and bring sex into the equation?

    It’s devoutly to be hoped that most normal married people have more that binds them than a fiery sex-life. But the movie spends much more time on that than anything. Two particularly awkward examples are when Mary reaches under her husband’s kilt (accompanied by some vulgar verbiage) and later, when she’s angry at Rob for having to head for the hills, she shouts like an uncouth bar-maid “Find a sheep to comfort yourself!” Yes, it is disgusting and unwomanly and plain mean to say such a thing, especially to one’s husband.

    There are no real religious references to speak of, and in the midst of all the turmoil, no one is heard to call out to God for aid. Even the vaguest hint of spirituality is deadened by the oppressive attitude of usury that pervades the film. None of the main characters, heroes, villains, or undefined, stand out as being particularly upstanding or moral. Both Rob and Mary brutally murder people with knives, and no one shows mercy or forgiveness to those who have wronged them. Instead, they will not rest until their vengeance is satisfied.

    What virtues they have consist of a more natural as opposed to supernatural variant. Most notably, Rob refuses to perjure because he prizes his reputation as a man of his word. In spite of her initial resistance to the this stance (resulting in the sheep comment), Mary does come to see that if Rob perjured the Duke of Argyll, he would no longer be himself, and if he were no longer himself, he would not longer be her Rob. With regards to Rob’s view on the meaning of honor, he tells his young sons that it is not a thing that men get, but that grows within them. When they ask him if women can have honor too, he replies that they are the heart of honor, and gives his wife a glowing smile.

    For her part, Mary doesn’t want Rob to find out she has been raped so he won’t act rashly and put himself in danger, going so far as to murder a would-be informant later on. When the secret finally gets out, Mary mentions the possibility of aborting the baby that may be Cunningham’s, but Rob makes clear that the baby isn’t the one who deserves to die and accepts his wife’s child as his own, saying, “If it’s a boy, name him Robert, and if it’s a lass, name her after my own dear Mary.” This is touching and a good pro-life message. But then it really is the least he could do under the circumstances.

    Needless to say, Archie is like the devil incarnate (or conversely the antithesis of Sir Percy Blackney from The Scarlet Pimpernel), and the screenplay writers take every precaution to make sure we know it. Of course, we should have known it to begin with since, just like his villainous confederates Col. Tavington from The Patriot and Capt. Hayward from The Last of the Mohicans, he has a proper English accent and dresses well. Really well, actually. I must confess that I paused several film clips just to marvel at his magnificent 18^th century attire. But for some inexplicable reason, modern heroes, or rugged anti-heroes, or what have you, are expected to be talk in a rustic dialect and be slovenly dressers.

    Exactly what people are supposed to take away from this cultural preference mystifies me. Yes, we all know that good clothing and clipped accents don’t make a good man, if that’s what they are trying to get across. But good clothing and clipped accents doesn’t make a bad man either! Furthermore, while such outfits and old-fashioned ceremonial customs may seem stupid and foppish for many today, back then, it was quite normal and not at all sinister for noblemen to behave like noblemen.

    So to conclude another one of my long-winded rants about the Hollywood-ization of the British culture and class system: why, why, why must they all be portrayed evil mass murderers, or pompous, self-consumed fops, or both? Sure, there were rats in the upper classes. And rats in the lower classes. And decent human beings, and even saints, that came out of both as well! Why, why, why can’t these populist, modernist, mega-million dollar producers get it through their thick skulls and give us some more diversity than “evil nobleman vs. gallant peasants” or in every single big-budget period piece???

    Historical accuracy, regarding what we know about the real or even legendary Rob Roy, is generally lost in translation. The stolen money saga that set Rob on his career as an outlaw (a career that was almost totally overlooked in the film) was actually perpetrated by either one of Rob’s men or the big man himself, not the Earl of Montrose. While there is a legend that his wife had been defiled by Killearn, another hireling of Montrose (not Archie, since Archie never existed!), the fact that Rob Roy later captured him and treated him with great kindness tends to put paid to that theory, unless of course the real Rob was much more forgiving than the movie version of himself.

    The plot itself suffered on any number of plains. For one thing, why does Montrose have to go through such an elaborate plot, involving murder and cover-up, just to retrieve the 1000 pounds from Rob Roy? Why not simply withhold the cash and bribe him to testify against the Duke of Argyll to begin with? And why would Rob’s testimony that Argyll was a Jacobite mean so much to the court anyway? Rob himself admits he was a former cattle thief, and it’s not specified if he has any particular connection with the nobility other than being a hireling of Montrose.

   

    The rest of the plot follows the same disjointed path that completely skips over the many Robin-Hood-like adventures the legendary Rob Roy is said to have had. All these thrills culminate in the most boring and contrived duel scenes in cinema history. The only reason he manages to kill Archie seems to be orchestrated by producer intervention since, villain or no, the shrimpy nobleman has him beat and has every right in the book of fair play to make a kabob out of him! Images of the blatantly set-up final fight between Mel Gibson and Col. Tavington in The Patriot come to mind here…..but that’s another story.

    Overall, Rob Roy was not just a let down for me as a history buff, but also a disturbing experience for me as a Christian. To me, a movie is a work of art when it knows what to show and what to indicate. Good taste is virtually nonexistent in this film, whether it had to do with sexual intercourse or death by the sword or using the chamber pot. It is disgusting and degrading, and I would never recommend it to anyone, child or adult, or ever watch it again myself. It lacked the virtues of faith, hope, and charity in major ways, and supplanted true love with physical passion, accuracy with sensationalism, and a good story with a catastrophic contrivance. 

Rugged Rob Roy (Liam Neeson) holds foppish Archibald Cunningham (Tim Roth) hostage