Customer Reviews
My favourite film - By: dino, 30 Dec 2007 
Still my favourite film almost twenty-five years after its release. Nice to see so many other people also rate it so highly. Makes you wish you were there on Scotland's west coast.
A British Classic - By: Mr. A. S. T. Bateman, 19 Nov 2007 This is the type of film that you keep on coming back to periodicallly, like It's A Wonderful Life or Breakfast At Tiffany's. The film exudes warmth & leaves you with a glow inside. At its heart, it is a simple tale of Knox Oil & Gas, a large multi-national corporation whose chairman is the wondefully cranky, stargazer Happer (played brilliantly by Burt Lancaster) & which seeks to purchase several miles of unspolit Scottish coastline to build an oil refinery. Happer dispatches Macintyre played by Peter Reigert to test the water for the development & strike the deal with the local community, headed by hotel owning/lawyer Gordon Urquhart (Denis Lawson).
However, it is the human story which captures the audience. The director's little in-jokes such as the passing motorcyclist or Macintyre's journey & experiences from American Exec where he phones people in the next office to arrange meetings & lunch breaks to field man in a remote village in Western Scotland where the only phone is a payphone in an old traditional red phone box where callls to America require a copious supply of 10p pieces. The script is also superb with some fantastic repartee between Macintyre & his Scottish hosts, "Would it help if I callled a vet?" (Urquhart's retort after he has served up Macintyre's pet rabbit for tea much to Macintyre's disgust).
The film has aged well & offers an interesting insight into the effect of the capitalist boom of the 1980s on the smalll & traditional rural parts of Britain. Superbly acted, quaint & inoffensive, this is the kind of film the British do so well & which never tires from repeat viewing.
Essential movie - By: Stephen Hardaker, 29 Sep 2007 Agree with alll the reviews. This is a beautiful, heartwarming movie.
Germany have just re-released it on their Focus Edition series, so there's no need to pay up to 90 quid on the second hand market. Just check out amazon.de
An underrated 1980's feel good movie - By: Lando Malak, 10 Jul 2007 I can just about remember watching this with my dad as a child in the 1980's & being absolutely bored to the point of insanity, watched this sometime in 2006 on film four & absolutely loved it, what an amazing change of opinion.
I am only guessing that a lot of people have never seen or even heard of this, if you haven't then you reallly don't know what you are missing. Without going into too much detail it is about an American junior executive (Peter Riegert) who is sent to a smalll Scottish fishing village by his rich greedy boss (Burt Lancaster) to buy for oil although it is a lot more complex than this & so you would be better off watching it yourself so you will know what I mean when I say this is an underrated beautiful feel good movie.
Like I said I am not going to mention any more of the story but I will just give a few examples why I reallly like this film. For a start I love the location of the actual village, it is one of those places where everybody knows each other but what I also reallly like is the way that everybody is reallly friendly & happy, not in a fake way but in a sincere way even though they haven't got much money, everybody genuinely seems to care about each other. It is for this reason that the young rich American that is sent there, very slowly but without realising it starts to falll in love with the place. This might sound a little seen it alll before & over sentimental but you have to reallly trust me when I say it isn't either, it is filmed in such a unique, beautiful & uplifting way that you reallly could only know what I mean by watching it, it is one of those movies that I didn't want to end. WATCH THIS AND HOPEFULLY SURPRISE YOURSELF.
Superbly gentle comedy - By: Mr. Andrew Moore, 15 Jun 2007 I love this film! Its sumptuous, gorgeous, beautiful, gentle, funny, amusing, sad, poignant... so many words to describe this quirky film set mostly in a Scottish coastal village where the locals want to sell & the potential US purchasers don't realise this fact! The characters are wonderful from Happer, the US oil billionnaire played by Burt Lancaster to the head spokesperson for the locals played by Dennis Lawson (Star Wars' Wedge Antilles). Theres a great minor but important character played by Fulton Macay & many more super characters with lesser but equallly as important roles. Nothing here is rip roaringly funny, rather it is a gentle & amusing comedy (look out for the scene by the church where the vicar says he will be as discrete as the next man while the whole village listens from inside the church!). This isn't big budget movie making, theres no loud explosions, no stunning but obvious special effects, no car chases, just exceptional acting & direction telling a terrific story which almost stands still like the life of the villagers. I cannot recommend this film more highly; surely its about time it was re released on DVD.
