Monday, 9:00pm, Great Movie
Michael Caton-Jones’s *Rob Roy* (1995) strides boldly across the Highland mists, kilt swirling, dirk flashing, and Liam Neeson in full Celtic growl. It is a film of sweeping vistas and high ideals, trading in the romanticism of rebellion and clan honour rather more than historical precision. The real Robert MacGregor was indeed a cattleman and outlaw of some regional repute, but the film re-forges him in the mould of Braveheart-lite — a noble savage wronged by the gentry, delivering Gaelic justice with broadsword in hand. The historical liberties are considerable: this is not so much 18th-century Scotland as a Highland fantasia, with Jacobite tensions lurking vaguely in the background but never quite cohering into political substance.
And yet, what grandeur in Carter Burwell’s score! Where the film leans heavily on myth, the music soars on emotion. Burwell, ever the sculptor of atmosphere, crafts a sonic palette that mixes traditional Scottish instrumentation — hear the keening uilleann pipes and plaintive fiddle — with a sweeping orchestral romanticism. The main theme is rich in yearning, conjuring not the real MacGregor but the legend the film longs to believe in. It’s less historical Scotland, more musical Brigadoon — but it works. There’s a sincerity to Burwell’s melodies that anchors the film’s loftier ambitions, offering a sort of sonic dignity to match Neeson’s furrowed-brow nobility.
Perhaps the film’s most enduring legacy lies not in its fidelity to fact (which is, let us say, selectively enthusiastic) but in its commitment to character and texture. Tim Roth’s snivelling villain, Archibald Cunningham, is a deliciously louche contrast to Neeson’s granite virtue — a Restoration rake tossed into the Highlands like a poisoned chalice. If *Rob Roy* offers a history of anything, it’s the perennial battle between honour and power, rendered here with a tartan flourish and scored to melancholy perfection. One leaves the film not necessarily wiser about Scottish history, but certainly more inclined to buy a soundtrack and take a long walk in the rain.