Down Among the Big Boys (1993)
Director: Charles Gormley
Screenwriter: Peter McDougall
Starring: Billy Connolly, Douglas Henshall, Rab Affleck, Ewan Stewart, Ashley Jensen, Gary Lewis, Billy Boyd
Released in 1993, Down Among the Big Boys arrived at a difficult moment for Scottish cinema. The industry at that time lacked the commercial momentum and international profile it would later enjoy with titles like Trainspotting and Ratcatcher. With few bankable film stars to rely on, filmmakers often turned to familiar faces from television and comedy; in this case Billy Connolly’s presence as a crime boss lends the film instant recognisability. Nearly three decades on, and with renewed interest in archival BBC projects and Connolly’s own public struggle with Parkinson’s, this modest crime drama invites reappraisal—if only to see how it reflects the state of Scottish film-making in the early 1990s.
The screenplay, penned by Peter McDougall, is the film’s strongest asset. It centres on Louie (Douglas Henshall), a local detective who is about to marry the daughter of JoJo (Billy Connolly), a Glaswegian crime lord plotting a bank robbery the same week. That setup—an officer of the law intimately bound to the family of a criminal—creates an immediate moral tension. The script mines that tension for dramatic and occasionally comic effect, balancing loyalty, duty and the complicated human ties that blur the lines between protagonist and antagonist. The family connection injects emotional weight into what could otherwise be a routine heist narrative, and McDougall’s dialogue often sparkles with wit and local colour.
Where the screenplay often shines, the execution sometimes falters. Director Charles Gormley’s approach is restrained to the point of flatness; many scenes are staged with a television-style economy that limits the visual energy the material could sustain. Action sequences can be crisp and well-conceived, yet are followed by domestic interludes that drag, diluting the film’s momentum. The result is a movie of peaks and troughs: moments of genuine intrigue and character insight are undone by stretches that feel inert, as if the film could have benefited from a bolder visual language or sharper pacing.
Performances are a mixed but generally positive element. Connolly brings an unexpected gravitas to JoJo, playing the crime boss with a wry, lived-in authority that offsets the script’s lighter moments. Douglas Henshall’s Louie is sympathetic and grounded, his conflicted loyalties believable and affecting. The supporting cast—Rab Affleck, Ewan Stewart, Ashley Jensen, Gary Lewis and Billy Boyd—fill out the world with dependable character work, supplying texture and authenticity even when the material around them is uneven. Collectively, they form a strong ensemble that suggests the film could have reached greater heights with more inspired direction.
In many respects, Down Among the Big Boys feels like a film caught between two mediums: it carries the intimacy and dialogue-driven focus of television drama but aspires to the scale and moral complexity of cinema. That tension works in its favour at times and against it at others. The screenplay’s ambition is evident, and the cast’s commitment keeps viewers engaged, but production choices and directional conservatism prevent the film from becoming the memorable crime drama it hints at being.
Ultimately, the film is a curious artifact of its era—flawed but not without merit. It offers a window into the concerns and constraints of Scottish filmmaking in the early 1990s and presents solid, if inconsistent, performances led by Connolly and Henshall. While it is unlikely to be remembered alongside the most influential British films of the decade, it deserves a place on the watchlist of anyone interested in regional cinema, character-driven crime stories, or the early careers of several now-familiar Scottish actors.
10/24