Restless Natives

A comedy set in Scotland. Will and Ronnie are two young men in Edinburgh. No work, no money and no plan ahead of them. One works in a joke shop, the other is unemployed. One day they have an idea. They get on a motorbike, put on masks and stop tourist coaches on the mountain roads. There are no guns; what they carry is a powder from the joke shop. They collect money from the tourists and ride away. The story gets into the papers. The two masked young men quickly become folk heroes; the papers write about them, tourists queue to be robbed and the number of visitors to Scotland rises. The police are after them and an American agent comes into it as well. What the film is interested in is not the crime but how a legend is built: the two plan nothing and the public enlarges the story itself. The landscape is a marked part of it; the mountain roads and lochs are set inside the narrative. The music is by the band Big Country and largely sets the air of the film. Vincent Friell, Joe Mullaney and Teri Lally are in the cast. Michael Hoffman directed. A pleasant choice for anyone who likes British comedy of the 1980s and gentle crime stories. For a viewer expecting a tight narrative, the film moves loosely and the tension is low.