Andrew Scott’s The Stag / The Bachelor Weekend

Movie Review: The Stag (The Bachelor Weekend in the U.S.)

In this Irish comedy, Andrew Scott plays Davin, a Best Man forced to take his friend, Fionnan, on a stag weekend before his wedding. They end up taking along Fionnan’s gay brother (played by the super hot Michael Legge) and his lover, as well as another friend (played by Brian Gleeson), and the ultra-hardcore brother-in-law (nicknamed “The Machine”). All sorts of shenanigans ensue, starting with the guys getting stuck in a tent…in the forest display of a sporting goods store. And Andrew has a hilarious phone call scene in which he tries to dissuade The Machine from coming: “This weekend, we are embarking on a silent walking retreat with some transsexual friends of ours in the rain….It will be wet and silent and boring and weird.”

The premise is the same as the Hangover films, but there the similarities end. Instead of exploring Vegas, in this movie six men unsuited to the outdoors go on a wilderness adventure and explore hidden secrets and what it means to be alive and in love. It actually reminds me much more strongly of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Third Star, just without the tragic terminal cancer element. The Machine teaches the other guys about being more “manly,” but what makes this movie really stand out is that the other five end up educating him on the softer side of being a man.

Plus, you get to hear Andrew Scott sing a lovely Irish ballad (“Raglan Road”) and get naked in the woods, hell yeah!

More Andrew Scott reviews here.

Movie Review: Locke with Tom Hardy

Movie Review: Locke with Tom Hardy, Andrew Scott, Olivia Coleman, and Ruth Wilson

Construction director Ivan Locke is having a very important day, but unfortunately everything is happening at once. All coinciding in one night are the birth of his illegitimate son (to a woman whom his wife does not know about), the culmination of a massive construction project with tons of little details he’s supposed to be overseeing, and a big football game he’s supposed to be watching with his sons. Despite trying to micro-manage each of them as he drives from Birmingham to London to be there for the baby’s birth, he finds his life spiraling out of control.

This is a very strange movie in which Tom Hardy is the only actor we actually see onscreen. He is brilliant at portraying a man trying so hard to hold everything together—his career, his personal life, and above all his own emotions and sense of duty—when it’s all falling apart. Although the story itself and Tom Hardy’s emotions are very effective, his creepily calm Welsh accent is so weird, making him sound stilted and unnatural, especially in comparison to the other actors, who feel much more realistic.

There’s also a part in which Locke talks in the rearview mirror to his dead father, a conceit which truly does not work. I think I get what they were going for—making him seem like a usually calm control freak who’s losing it—but instead, it just makes him seem like a theater actor monologuing in a one-man play instead of a real person.

Andrew Scott plays Donal, Locke’s coworker who finds himself unexpectedly in charge of pouring concrete for a $100 million project when Locke can’t be there. Naturally, he’s freaking out about it, drinking, slowly losing it as things get more and more desperate. Andrew brings a ton of energy to the role, and it was always a pleasure to hear his distinctive voice.

I suppose I went into the movie thinking it would be about a guy on the run from gangsters (you know, your typical stuck-in-a-car situation), but it was a bit refreshing to see that it was actually quite a deep character study, even if certain elements didn’t entirely gel for me.

More Andrew Scott reviews here.