by Eric Blume
It’s been a quarter century since the release of Rob Roy, a film directed by Michael Caton-Jones and featuring the pairing of Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange. The period drama is about the eponymous 18th Century Scotland clan chief Robert Roy MacGregor.
Evidently there was a box-office hunger for this type of film around 1995, since one month later Mel Gibson’s Braveheart opened. The latter tragically went on to win Best Picture some nine months later. Both films feature tales of broad-stroke heroism, where the main figure is portrayed as a rebel fighting the system, full of masculine bravado and BDE (the un-fun kind)...
If it all feels a little yawn-inducing today, Rob Roy still has some pleasures. Neeson was at the round-one height of his stardom. Fresh from Schindler’s List, roles such as Rob Roy and his next film, Michael Collins, allowed him to not only display his estimable sexiness and star charisma but also to do some actual acting. He charts Rob Roy’s battles with a mournful undertone to the heroics; he’s playing the actions and obstacles and consequences, not the bravery and warrior schtick. Neeson’s career has been all over the place, and his second-round height of stardom, in Taken and beyond, has been such a let-down because he just looks so bored onscreen. That was not once the case and he effortly carries Rob Roy with true spark.
He also has an electrifying chemistry with Lange, and by that I mean it appears they may fuck at any given moment in this movie. They’re physically so well-matched, and bring out such a base horniness in each other, that it’s great fun to watch their scenes together. There are too few of them, though. Lange, fresh off her Best Actress Oscar for Blue Sky (a win I’ll defend rabidly forever, especially against that competition), isn’t in her comfort zone here: she’s not in her element with either period or accents. But she delivers where she needs to (see below).
Tim Roth got a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Rob Roy and the nomination is easy to understand. He’s a glorious, full-baked ham. His cat-who-ate-the-canary face belies his layered chess playing, and he’s wonderfully fey and inspired. It’s a preposterous performance, shameless in some ways, but he’s always in control, specific and calculated. Roth is having a blast, and he brings the film humor and flamboyance, both of which are much needed between all the ye-Highlands accents and bloodbath sequences.
The highlight of the movie comes in a pretty awful scene where Roth’s character rapes Lange and burns the village, and she demands silence from a witness. Roth and Lange have genuine power, and the sequence elevates the film into something with true flesh-and-blood.
But overall, Rob Roy is tedious, both dramatically undercooked and stylistically overblown. Director Caton-Jones aims for a big-Hollywood grandiosity, but he doesn’t have the confidence or panache to pull it off. And he doesn’t have a powerful sense of imagery: the film doesn’t have a single memorable tableau. If you have a soft spot for this sort of kilt-and-dagger film, you'll probably enjoy it, but otherwise Rob Roy hasn’t aged well outside some fine work from its actors.
Related
A very different take on Rob Roy by Michael Cusumano
More 1995 stuff
Clueless by Cláudio Alves
Toy Story and Pocahontas by Tim Brayton
Sense & Sensibility by Cláudio Alves
Nicole Kidman in 1995 by Abstew
Supporting Actress Smackdown by Nathaniel & Guests