Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue (1953)

Ach, ai’m feelin’ lik’ th’ year 1953 haes bin gaun oan forever.  Bit th’ guid speirins is, this is th’ lest costume picture!  Let’s see howfur lang Richard Todd kin keep his shirt oan this time. Bets stairt noo. This is Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue.

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I’d like to apologize in advance for my ignorance, but I am American and I have never heard of Rob Roy until like… right now. And because Walt decided he was going to base his film off of legends and history instead of Sir Walter Scott’s novel, I don’t even really have much in the way of source material. Here’s the gist of it from Wikipedia for anyone else unfamiliar: Rob Roy Macgregor and his father joined a rebellion to fight for Scottish independence. It failed and his father was tossed in prison. Macgregor was promised a pardon by the Duke of Argyll if he gave up all of his weapons, but the Clan Gregor was conspicuously and specifically excluded from a law pardoning the rebels. He ended up getting labeled an outlaw for making people pay for him to guard their cattle. Even Richard Todd described it as a protection racket. Also he had a blood feud with another Duke.

At least this premise sounds a little more action-packed than The Sword in the Rose. But it also features most of the cast from the previous film, and was filmed almost immediately after. Another studio tried to adapt the legends but ended up canceling it. So my hopes are not high. At least some of the critics liked Richard Todd’s performance and some of the action sequences. So maybe it’s not as boring as the last movie? Still, the movie didn’t do very well. In fact, this one performed so poorly at the box office that Walt decided not to make any more costume dramas. And thank heavens for small favors. It’s also the very last movie RKO was involved in before Disney started releasing all of their own stuff. Shall we see if they go out with a bang or a whimper? And seriously, just how long can Richard Todd keep his shirt on?

STORY

The opening text sets the scene for all us dumb Americans who have no idea what the Jacobean Uprising was. Basically, like I said, the Scots are mad that the German George I became King instead of Scottish James Stuart. The British crushed the rebellions until only a few stubborn Highlanders remained to fight. And then the redcoats march through the hills. And they march. And they march some more. Finally, we see the Scots screaming like crazy people and racing up the hills. You can tell they’re Scottish because they’re all wearing kilts. Rob Roy is among them and… oh come on, are you kidding me?  He’s already half-naked?  Is wearing shirts hard or something?  Even the poncy British guys in their brocade coats and powdered wig are judging him.

The two sides fight and there are swords and cannons and guns and it’s all very smoky.  Rob Roy shoots a guy.  The British cavalry storms in, and their horses give them the advantage that they need.  The battle is over and they march away the Highlanders they’ve taken prisoner, including Rob Roy himself.  Two British officers, General Cadogan and the Duke of Argyll, gloat from their hilltop about having captured Rob Roy because he’s a clan chief.  Cadogan has reinforcements, and Argyll asks him to just make them stand on top of the hill.  Cadogan protests, saying he could easily have his guys go down and just massacre everything.  Argyll is against senseless bloodshed because he’s Scottish, too, which infuriates Cadogan into threatening to report him to the Duke of Walpole, his direct superior.

Distant bagpipes play as the rest of the men come home. Families reunite. There is a dog and fluffy cows. A pretty girl peeks out of the door to her home, searching the crowd for a specific face. Evidently, he doesn’t show, and she sadly goes back inside. Two MacGregor clansmen approach an old house, and an old woman, Lady Margaret, begs for news of her son “Robby”. Apparently he’s been taken prisoner to Sterling Castle, and she scolds them for letting their own clansmen get into such a predicament. Rob Roy’s mother decides he’s not going to hang and rides off, with the bewildered Macgregors acting as an escort.

Inside Sterling Castle, the Duke of Argyll starts to sit down to a feast. The Duke of Montrose bursts in, because once again, Michael Gough is here to ruin everything. He’s been reviewing the reports and he’s not too thrilled that more British men died than Scottish rebels. Argyll gets defensive because they still won and that’s the important thing. Montrose is not convinced. Before they can argue, Lady Margaret enters and reveals that she’s the Duke of Argyll’s cousin. He apologizes for Rob Roy’s fate but she’s not having any of it, and ends up waiting outside while the two Dukes talk about stuff.

Montrose brings out a list of prisoners they caught at the end of that battle. Argyll wants them tried in Scotland because a London trial ends in a hanging, but Montrose wants all the would-be rebels tried in London for that exact reason. Not only that, but he wants to personally carry Rob Roy there because he’s a little bit of a sadist. Argyll is furious that Montrose would betray Scotland like that, but Montrose points out that it’s more treachery for the Secretary of State to let the rebels go. And honestly? He’s got a point. He threatens to have Argyll stripped of his title if he doesn’t bring Rob Roy to London.

Just outside, Margaret waits patiently for the men to finish up. She’s ticked off because her own kinsman jailed Rob. Ever pragmatic, Argyll tells her James Stewart was never going to be King anyway and it’s better to jail all of the rebels than to let a pointless war continue. Besides that, he needs to save face if he wants to keep his position. Margaret doesn’t give two figs about his position, but he at least stands firm on his insistence at holding Rob Roy’s trial in Scotland. This gives Margaret an idea: if they have the trials in London, they have to get there first. And a lot of things can happen on the way between Scotland and London. Argyll catches on with a grin.

Montrose and his man Killearn mock Rob Roy as their carriage clatters along. They’re on their way to London, all excited that they’re going to get to hang him. Rob Roy sasses right back because Montrose is half-Scottish, which makes his arrest treason. Killearn pimpslaps him across the face, but Montrose is unphased. Full disclosure, I had to watch this scene like four times before I figured out what was going on. I’m having a major issue with the face blindness thing and the heavy (bad) accents are making it worse, so I thought Killearn was another prisoner or something. Anyway, the carriage clatters to a halt, delayed by rogue sheep. Killearn orders the shepherd to get them out of the way, but the shepherd’s like nah. Instead, he and his men hijack the carriage, throwing Killearn and Montrose out and getting Rob Roy to safety. As Montrose lays in the mud, the Scots surround him, throwing his muddy wig at him. Rob Roy warns him to mind his own business in the future, and tweaks his nose to finalize the humiliation. It’s like a less humorous version of the Sheriff’s humiliation in Robin Hood.

Lady Margaret drops the housecleaning she’s been working on the second she sees Rob Roy making his way home. She embraces him, thrilled that he escaped, but he’s got no time to rest. More trouble is on its way, and he needs his father’s pistols, which are locked up in Margaret’s room. She doubts he’ll need them, but the Duke of Montrose himself just tried to have Rob Roy hanged. Of course he’ll need them. She has a little more faith, since the Duke of Argyll approved his escape plan, but that’s not good enough for him because he’s a dirty dirty Campbell. Lady Margaret gets offended because she’s a Campbell, even if she’s expected to be more loyal to the Clan MacGregor because of who she married. Great, more patriarchal crap.

Rob Roy has the decency to apologize for talking to his mother that way. He’s just upset that Argyll quelled his rebellion, but his mother defends him because it’s not that bad to want peace. All she wants is for her son to settle down. Rob Roy asks about a particular girl from the inn named Helen Mary. He’s basically like “omg did she say something to you? Omg I’m freaking out right now tell me her exact words” because crushes are all the same. Margaret teases him that Helen Mary probably has lots of other suitors and he gets all jealous. He refuses to go to her though. You never tell a girl you like her because it makes you look like an idiot.

At the very inn in question, Hamish Macpherson, the innkeeper, regales his patrons with war stories.  Apparently, this particular story has been told about a million times.  Helen Mary cuts in starts telling the exact story with great exaggerated relish, swinging her uncle’s crutch like a sword.  It reminds me of Merida finishing her dad’s story about how he lost his leg to Mor’du, except that movie’s way better and I wish I was watching it instead.  Hamish’s wife Maggie gently scolds her for being too high-spirited.  She settles down and offers to chop haggis while Maggie bakes, in case anyone forgot this is Scotland.  Hamish limps in, questioning why Helen Mary is wearing her Sunday best on a Thursday, almost like she’s trying to impress someone.  And then he launches right back into his war stories.

Helen Mary doesn’t have an ear to spare.  Rob Roy saunters into the inn, but Hamish doesn’t even stop to draw breath.  Rob Roy gets Hamish on a tangent about shooting redcoats, and sneaks away to the kitchens for a little privacy with Helen Mary.  Maggie tries to get him to help with the chores so she can keep an eye on the couple, but he insists on being alone.  Hamish warns that Rob Roy is probably going to be all skeevy because he’s a soldier, but Helen Mary just knows he’ll be a perfect gentleman.  Either way, Maggie stays in the room working and Hamish sits down to tune his bagpipes.  Loudly.  Every time Rob Roy utters a sentence.

Rob Roy gets enough words in edgewise to ask Helen Mary what’s going on between them. She’s just so pretty that he’s sure he’s not the only guy who’s into her. Hamish interrupts to offer the names of some other, better suitors before Maggie shushes him. She likes Rob Roy because his mother donated lots of pretty things for the inn. Hamish huffs and goes back to his bagpipes. Rob Roy stops beating around the bush and straight up tells her he hopes to marry her. Her response? “Why?” So he comes out and proposes. And Hamish doesn’t want to hear any of this so he finishes tuning his bagpipes and starts blasting… do you call that music? Our young lovers seize each others’ hands and race outside to make out a lot.

The very next scene is their wedding. My God, that was fast. I don’t know these characters or their romance at all yet and already they’re tying the not. All righty then. Rob Roy offers a toast to his new bride, but it includes the phrase “she’s my mother all over again” which… um. Yikes. There’s a lot to unpack there but let’s just throw away the whole suitcase. He also very seriously says he’d die for her because he’s a hero type and that’s what they do. Everyone sings and dances and celebrates around a bonfire which is a lot more enjoyable than those weird, weird wedding vows. But all good things must come to an end.

Killearn and his man gatecrash the party to the horror of all the Scots. He announces that the King has decreed that anyone who took part in the rebellion is to be pardoned… except the Clan MacGregor. Not only that, he’s banning them or any of their descendants from ever using the name they’re so proud of, and forbidding them from ever holding weapons. And he’s really vindictive and extra about breaking this news. Kinda makes me want to punch him. Rob Roy is thinking the same thing and raises his dagger, which brings Killearn to his next point. The Secretary of State has sent out a warrant for Rob Roy’s arrest.

Margaret protests, saying the Duke of Argyll would never do such a thing… but Argyll is no longer Secretary of State, and the Duke of Montrose would happily do such a thing. The MacGregor clansmen are ready to fight but Rob Roy orders them to stand down and go back to the booze. Killearn warns Rob Roy not to try to run or else, so Rob Roy embraces his wife and his mother goes quietly. For now. As the soldiers march him through the woods. When he sees a river, Rob Roy snaps the stick holding his arms behind them and fights the soldiers acting as his guard. He dives into the river, dodging the soldiers’ bullets, and makes a rather epic jump over a huge waterfall.  While the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy shoots at him, Rob Roy swims to the opposite riverbank and bites through his bonds.  To the soldiers’ credit, they at least go down to the water to make sure that their prisoner is dead.  One of them spots some tartan floating in the water and spears it with his bayonet, but it’s not a body.  It’s just a scarf.  The man himself is home free!

Back home, the MacGregors are getting restless.  Seems Rob Roy was supposed to show up and he hasn’t, so they squabble over whether or not they should go look for him.  It’s a moot point, anyway.  Rob Roy pops up out of nowhere and takes them to task for fighting amongst themselves.  He also warns them to just go home and obey the new stupid laws, but only because he wants to fight the Duke of Montrose personally.  He leaves them to sneak through the upstairs window of the inn, conveniently located right next to the mountainside.  He wakes Helen Mary and apologizes for what a bad choice in husband she’s made.  She would have chosen anyway… and while they’re snuggling we cut outside to a pointless interlude of the soldiers searching for Rob Roy.  He tries to leave again to protect her and stop his family from getting themselves killed, but she clings to him.

Suddenly, the soldiers bang on the door.  Margaret wakes up to answer, swearing to them that she hasn’t seen Rob Roy.  And she hasn’t, because he snuck through the window.  But they spot him leaving the same way and shoot at him.  Once again, he escapes because they utterly fail at hitting their targets.  Also, he kicks a boulder at them.  And the boulder is a truly spectacular special effects failure: it’s superimposed on top of the rest of the film and possibly animated?  It looks hilariously bad.  Rob Roy finishes his second daring escape in about five minutes by leaping across a huge chasm and Tarzan swinging over a branch.  There’s no way those idiots in the stupid wigs can follow that.

The next scene starts really abruptly.  The MacGregor clan is gathered in the inn, and they’re not too thrilled about being taxed double.  Killearn is incredibly smug about it and threatens to shoot their spokesman if he doesn’t pay.  He grudgingly agrees, but asks for a receipt.  That’s the kind of thrilling stuff here in this action movie, folks.  Killearn asks what name he’s putting on the receipt, and the spokesman proudly announces that he’s Dougal MacGregor. But officially, there’s no such last name as MacGregor so he orders his lackey to write MacAllister. Furious at the slight on his identity, Dougal throws the receipt at the messenger who whips out his gun.  Hamish swoops in out of nowhere, snapping that he’s not going to allow that in his inn. Killearn’s like “ohhhh, this is YOUR inn?” and asks for the deed, which is sitting above the fireplace behind him… so he pimpslaps Hamish. Apparently that’s like his thing or something.

Killearn gloats evilly that he’s going to tax them all to death and they’re going to like it or he’ll have them hanged. The only way they’re getting out of this is if one of them brings him Rob Roy MacGregor, in which case he’ll return every crown. These guys absolutely suck at this manhunt thing. Rob Roy is literally right behind Killearn, and he throws the enormous bag of tax money back at the MacGregors. He has a message for Killearn: leave his men alone. He’ll take whatever punishment is due to him, but the rest of his family is innocent.  You’d think there’d be some kind of response to this but that’s the end of the scene.  This movie has a real problem with the transitions.

The Duke of Montrose is furious that Killearn still hasn’t captured Rob Roy.  And I don’t blame him. How do you not arrest him after he shows up right behind you like that?  Rob Roy’s personal vendetta is coming to a head: someone stole some of Montrose’s cattle and beat the cattlehands.  Officially, it was an “unknown hand” but Montrose wasn’t born yesterday. Even the King thinks Killearn and Montrose are incompetent for letting this go on so long.  Killearn whines that he needs more men, but Montrose coldly says that’s not really helping his case when he needs all the troops in their jurisdiction for one guy.  And this makes Killearn lose his mind.  Apparently he’s seeing Rob Roy MacGregor everywhere, in everyone, all of the time.  So he should probably see somebody about that. Montrose, at least, has the presence of mind to come up with a pretty clever diabolical plan.  He’s going to smoke Rob Roy out by ordering his mother’s arrest.

But first, we have to watch the redcoats march across the hills again.  And they march.  And they march.  And they march some more.  They’re on their way to sack Hamish’s inn, and Margaret is furious.  Helen Mary tries to restrain her, but the soldiers drag her away because as we all know every girl is helpless if you grab her by the forearms.  It’s okay though because Rob Roy pops up out of absolutely freakin nowhere to be all swashbuckly and save his girl while she… runs and hides.  Seriously, how did we go from Maid Marion to this?  Even Mary Tudor fought for what she wanted in her own way.  This is just sad.  The movie does redeem itself in the feminism department when Margaret races upstairs to get her dead husbands pistols. She gets a few good shots out the window, but then everything goes sideways.

The redcoats break the door down and shoot her in the stomach. To her credit, she doesn’t let it stop her hitting a few more targets and telling Helen Mary she’s fine, but she can’t go on too much longer. She hands off the pistols to Rob Roy. Just then, we cut outside and Killearn sets the whole inn on fire.  Things almost got interesting there for a second, so we cut back to the clan MacGregor. They see the smoke rising from the inn and decide the time is now. Screw the whole weapons ban thing, they grab them from the rafters or the floorboards and storm outside. Meanwhile, Rob Roy stares in mild concern at the smoke filling up the inn. I guess the redcoats have the place barricaded but he’s not even trying to save his mom or his girl, both of whom are huddled in a corner. Margaret coughs as the smoke exacerbates her wound, which Rob Roy and Helen Mary are still completely oblivious to.

Killearn calls through the door that he’ll spare the ladies if Rob Roy gives himself up… and the whole clan charges in to attack. Only then does Rob Roy ask Helen Mary to get his mother to safety. Finally, Helen Mary notices that Margaret is wounded, and asks a young clansman to get help from the village. There’s some more action and more dudes getting shot in the spirit. Rob Roy gets the message via telepathy or something because we don’t see the boy talk to him, and puts Dougal in charge of the attack so he can check on his mom. She murmurs her son’s name and begs Helen Mary to stop him from fighting because more than anything she believes in peace. Just as Rob Roy gets to her, she dies in Helen Mary’s arms.

The bagpipes play a funeral dirge as Margaret’s funeral party rows out onto the loch. Maybe it’s one of those “warriors have no emotions” things but Helen Mary looks sadder about this than Rob Roy.   The Duke of Argyll comes to pay his respects to his deceased cousin, followed swiftly by the Duke of Montrose who is here to ruin everything. Argyll is rightfully furious at the guy for gatecrashing a funeral, and calls his guards to pop up out of the woods. Montrose is like “oh crap” for a split second, but quickly regains his composure and accuses Argyll of siding with the MacGregors, threatening to report him to Walpole, his direct superior. Argyll fires back by calling him a coward and a sycophant. Montrose retreats and the actual funeral takes place offscreen. And it’s bizarre: we can hear the priest reading off the last rites but the camera is fixated on a tree.

Rob Roy thanks Argyll for getting rid of Montrose, and he vows revenge for his mother’s death. The Duke wishes he could help but he’s basically persona non grata in the court and has no power. He pleads with Rob Roy to keep trying for peace but that’s definitely off the table after Montrose’s men killed his mother. So Argyll tries a different tack: asking Helen Mary to get through to Rob Roy. She begs him to let Argyll negotiate with Montrose and the King. Once again, Rob Roy refuses because if he lays down and stops fighting Montrose will just kill them all anyway so why bother? I swear 90% of this movie is just Rob Roy refusing to listen to anyone.

Helen Mary makes one last ditch effort to get Rob Roy to stop being a stubborn bloodthirsty idiot, repeating his mother’s last words about peace.  That seems to get through to him. The next scene begins with Rob Roy climbing a mountain with a white flag of surrender. He stops in front of the British Castle and tells Killearn he wants to negotiate. Killearn, being terrible, responds by shooting Rob Roy. No preamble, no attempt to work things out. Just straight into the violence. God, I hate that guy. Fortunately, he only shoots him in the arm. Rob Roy’s fine, but that’s all he needs to know that no matter how hard he tries, these guys just aren’t going to play nice.

The legend of Rob Roy spreads far and wide. In the dreaded London, people swarm to hear about the newest adventures of their outlaw hero, much as they do Robin Hood. There’s even a reference to Daniel DeFoe’s novel, which is a nice little touch. The citizen’s fascination with their enemy concerns Walpole, who worries that all of Scotland will follow their hero’s lead and revolt. Montrose agrees, knowing that the pardon does not ensure their loyalty. Highlanders are notoriously hotblooded and given to rebellion which… shouldn’t that mean you should reexamine your life choices? I mean, they wouldn’t rebel if you listened to the people you’re supposed to be protecting. One interesting note about this scene is that Montrose acts completely different towards Walpole than he has to anyone else so far. It’s obvious that he has a lot more respect towards the Duke of higher standing than any of his own underlings. He’s still very slimy but it’s almost like he’s sniveling as opposed to the barely concealed contempt he has for Killearn or Rob Roy. Also, Walpole’s kinda hot.

As luck would have it, though, King George I is among those who are enchanted by the daring adventures of Rob Roy. The Countess reads him the adventures, as a means of helping the German-born King learn English. She even reenacts the part where Rob Roy tweaked Montrose’s nose. Walpole emerges to announce that the Duke of Argyle wants to speak to the King, even though he’s been exiled from the Court. Walpole and Montrose get an audience with their king and are outraged that Argyll is here after the stuff he pulled. Not to be spoken to like that, Argyll tells the King all about how Montrose attacked Rob Roy at his mother’s funeral. Family is a big deal for the Scottish, after all. Montrose counters by saying he needs 6,000 troops to capture the outlaw and hit the Highlanders really hard, and it’s all Argyll’s fault. It’s like watching two spoiled children bicker. Argyll’s really confident that Rob Roy will come quietly and let them negotiate. The King gets super excited at the prospect of Rob Roy showing up in London, but not because he’s an outlaw. He’s just fanboying over getting to meet his hero! It’s pretty adorable.

The clan MacGregor climb up the hills with cannons and stuff, ready to attack an important British fort. Helen Mary comes up out of the gunsmoke, pleading for Rob Roy to listen to her and stop making things worse. Rob Roy turns his back on her, telling her to go back to the inn. He even tells her to her face that he’s never going to listen to anyone other than a MacGregor ever again in his life. Discouraged, Helen Mary turns away. The MacGregors carry on with their plan, very, very slowly aiming their cannons at the fort While all the soldiers’ backs are turned, Rob Roy gives the signal and they all blast the British defenses to smithereens. More fighting happens. More guys get shot in the spirit. Killearn hurries to help a gunner bring more cannons up to the ramparts, but Rob Roy shoots the gunner before he can light it. So Killearn lights the cannon himself, firing grapeshot over the battlefield and ripping apart a bunch of people on both sides.

Being the protagonist, Rob Roy is completely fine. He confronts Killearn, who threatens to light up a whole barrel of gunpowder unless Rob Roy stands down. This entire movie has been about Rob Roy’s refusal to stand down, so true to form, he hurls a hatchet at Killearn’s chest and kills him dead. That’s as solid a victory as any, so the Scottish declare that they’ve taken the fort. Argyll quietly approaches while the Highlanders round up the surviving British soldiers. He’s come to negotiate with Rob Roy, but the King can’t overlook him taking over a British fort and killing a high-ranking military officer. He’s very disappointed in him for committing so many war crimes. Rob Roy doesn’t care what the King thinks because he’s an icky German and the fort is his now so nyeh. Argyll storms off because talking to Rob Roy is like talking to a brick wall.

Once again, Argyll has failed to convince Rob Roy to stop killing people, so Helen Mary gives it a try. She scolds him because he’s as good as gotten them all killed. She can’t even uphold her wedding vows and honor her husband because he’s being so incredibly stupid. He doesn’t stop her from storming away. Infuriatingly, the man are all like “women. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em”, and the movie kind of portrays them as being in the right? I mean, the entire plot of the movie hinges on everyone telling Rob Roy he’s being an idiot, but I just feel like it wants us to think Helen Mary is being unreasonable. She’s not. At all. Rob Roy watches her leave, completely impassive. Either that, or Richard Todd forgot how to emote.

Argyll returns to the King empty-handed. All he has to offer is bad news: Rob Roy has taken the fort. He offers to redeem himself by personally fighting the rebels with his men behind him. It turns out that’s not necessary. Bagpipes blare in the distance, and everyone is like “what is that horrible racket?” As it turns out, Rob Roy has come to London under his own steam, and he’s brought the rest of the clan, too. All of London fangirls like Keith Richards or Justin Beiber is walking through the streets. Even the guards let the rebellious outlaw waltz right up to the King, though they at least are good enough at their jobs not to let the rest of the clan into the throne room. Rob Roy begs forgiveness from Argyll and the King, and asks for amnesty for his clan. He’ll turn himself in as long as they’re pardoned.

In a scene that would later be replicated better in Mulan, the King takes Rob Roy’s sword and recounts all his crimes. Rob Roy protests that he’s suffered a great deal of injustice, being stripped of his name and his lands. Montrose begs to be allowed to kill him personally, but the King tells him to shut up and stop looking to climb the social ladder. He happily grants the whole Clan MacGregor amnesty, including Rob Roy, and tells him he greatly admires his exploits.  Rob Roy does a complete 180 and decides that this German guy isn’t such a bad king after all.

The MacGregors return to Scotland as heroes, telling their wild war stories again, but now they’re all about what it was like to be in the King’s throne room. Apparently, the King offered to make Rob Roy the new Secretary of State as Montrose has been ousted for being the worst. Rob Roy declined and asked for Argyll to be returned to his rightful place, and all this happened offscreen. Helen Mary is completely unimpressed by all of this. She just wants to know if the London girls he met were pretty, and the men tease her all about their fine clothes and jewels. But Rob Roy rides right up to the inn, and she flies out to meet him. They make out a lot and apparently she honors him again. And that’s the end.

The ending of this movie is really rushed and abrupt.  Any sort of climax happens completely offscreen, and it’s not even the only time in the movie where something emotional and exciting is told but not shown.  Like The Sword in the Rose, it’s a very talky movie, with very little action and very little interest.  This film is at heart a political drama, not an action film like it pretends to be, and political dramas have a very niche audience.  It’s a shame, too, because the whole Scottish Robin Hood thing is a pretty interesting premise.  Seriously, why is Walt struggling so much with action?  Treasure Island was great, and Robin Hood was good.  What happened, man?

CHARACTERS

Rob Roy MacGregor is a stubborn idiot who refuses to listen. His motto seems to be “kill first, ask questions later” even when everyone around him warns him that that’s probably not the best plan. He’s hotblooded and a little bloodthirsty, and not the least bit reckless. Richard Todd is back for his third and final Disney appearance, this time sporting a bad attempt at a Scottish accent and a really dumb looking beard. I’m sorry but I’m not a fan of his acting. All of his characters have had this annoying smugness to them that made it nearly impossible to root for them, no matter how heroic they were supposed to be. And Rob Roy is probably the worst of the lot.

Helen Mary Macpherson MacGregor, apart from having the most unnecessarily long name I’ve ever heard, does nothing. She does nothing. She doesn’t even have that designated love interest thing going on, because we don’t see much of their relationship. Her sole purpose is to nag Rob Roy into changing his ways, and it doesn’t even work. It’s a real shame, too, because her introduction where she’s pretending to swordfight her uncle makes it look like she’ll be a lot of fun. She’s played by Glynis Johns again, who was Mary Tudor in The Sword and the Rose. She’s not even bothering with the Scottish accent everyone else is putting on, and it was rather distracting.

The Duke of Argyll is the voice of reason, possibly more than Helen Mary. Unfortunately for him, Rob Roy doesn’t listen to him any more than he does his wife. He also serves as a convenient go-between between Rob Roy’s clan, since he’s Rob Roy’s mother’s cousin, and the royal court, since he’s a Duke. James Robertson Justice gives a much more understated performance than he did as Henry VIII or Little John, to the point where I actually didn’t recognize him at first.

The Duke of Montrose, by contrast, is a social climbing toady whose sole purpose is to crush the rebels and earn the king’s favor. He’s slimy, he’s skeevy, and he cares about his job more than anything else. Unfortunately for him, he’s not terribly good at his job, and Rob Roy gets the better of him more than once. That said, he’s a much more threatening villain than the last one Michael Gough played. Who was also a Duke. Funny, that.

Killearn is Montrose’s stooge. He’s actually even more mustache-twirlingly evil than Montrose, because he’s incredibly petty. He enjoys being incredibly petty, too, and he’s ridiculously extra about it. He also has an incredibly punchable face. Normally I like the bad guys, but I cheered when he took a hatchet to the chest. He’s just so slimy.

Margaret Campbell MacGregor is Rob Roy’s mother, and I have saved the best for last. She’s such a cool old lady, with no time for her son’s nonsense and even less time for Montrose’s nonsense. Anyone who responds to a crisis by grabbing a pair of guns and taking down the problem (or trying to) automatically has my respect. And she talks back to Montrose, too, which is just fabulous. She’s also got some great words of wisdom about the importance of peace, which are words to live by even though Rob Roy refuses to admit it.

ARTISTRY

Guy Green was in charge of cinematography for this one, and you can tell he enjoyed his job. Because the movie was filmed on location, he was able to capture some epic sweeping vistas of the Scottish highlands. Unfortunately for him, that results in much of the movie looking muddy brown and green, and there’s only so long you can look at the same mountain before you want action. Maybe that’s just me. Peter Ellenshaw is back with his matte paintings, too, which, like the last two times we saw him, look so good that I couldn’t tell you what’s a painting and what’s real. So score one for Ellenshaw. Lastly, I don’t have notes about the special effects team, but they look rough even for 1953. That boulder is so conspicuous it made me laugh at loud at a scene that was supposed to be tense. Not a good thing.

MUSIC

No one on the planet likes the sound of bagpipes.  I know it takes place in Scotland, but ugh.  There’s so much of it.  There’s SO MUCH.  There are better ways to establish setting than by murdering our eardrums.  That said, though, Cedric Thorpe Davie did some nice work with incorporating Gaelic melodies in scenes like Rob Roy’s wedding and Margaret’s funeral.  But seriously.  No one likes bagpipes.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This movie was very specifically made for British and Scottish audiences.  There’s a reason it did so much better over there than it did at the American box office: they knew what was going on.  It’s a time of history that was important to them, that they learned about in school.  But the story doesn’t resonate with an American audience, and I had to do a great deal of extraneous research that went beyond just reading a book to keep up.  It’s not helped by an emphasis on boring court politics that weren’t relevant in 1953 and certainly aren’t relevant now, nor by the poorly done accents and complete useless female lead.  The final nail in its coffin is the samey, dreary locales that all look the same.  I couldn’t tell the difference between the castles and the inn, and that’s a problem.

Favorite scene: Margaret continuing to waste redcoats even though she’s been shot in the stomach.  Like a boss.

Final rating: 3/10.  It squeaks out a better score than The Sword in the Rose, but that’s mostly just because it wasn’t actively infuriating me.  It was just dull.