Stone of Destiny (2008)

What’s amusing about this film is that a friend of mine wrote me a message telling me that she’s watching it for the Scottish accents. At the time I was rereading an old diary entry from, oh, two years ago, which had a whole list of movies that “had to had to had to see” written all over the page. Stone of Destiny was at the very top.

The story of Ian Hamilton (Charlie Cox), a dedicated nationalist who reignited Scottish national pride in the 1950s with his daring (and successful) raid on the heart of England to bring the Stone of Scone back to Scotland.

Now, first and foremost: this is not a lovechild of Disney and Dreamworks. It’s not a bloody animated feature, even though it sounds like it should have the voice of Carey Elwes as the leading prince or something. No. This is a fully-fledged, sex-on-legs-accented movie. And it’s bloody brilliant. Now, I really need to read up on my Scottish history, because I don’t know any. I’m not gonna pretend like I do just coz I read a wiki article about it 10 minutes ago. So I’m going to review this just as a movie and not relate it to the real events at all, in case I get it wrong and make a total fool of myself. I do that enough as it is already.

I was messaging aforementioned friend while watching this and she calmly informed me that “this film is not a comedy as it’s billed; that’s just Scots being Scottish”. If that’s the case then bring it on, 2012, I can take Edinburgh and run with it far enough to never be found and brought back to NZ. This is one of the most amusing things I have ever seen. I can’t even say it was because of the script… it felt like there WAS no script, it was perfectly natural and I think this is WHY it was so funny. Well, that and the fact that this was based on real events and if things really happened like that then it would have just been ridiculous.

I guess when push comes to shove it really was the naturalness of the film that really made me like it. It’s about a bunch of teenagers, college students, people my age, who decided to restore a country’s pride by doing something reckless and impossible. And they did it. And it was realistic, which really made me happy. Yes, they got the stone, they brought it back, they succeeded, but they got caught, they got charged, and it was HARD TO DO. It wasn’t a quick in-and-out-done-and-done job. It took effort, it took planning, it took time and the bleeding stone was heavy!

Another thing I really liked about the film, or, at least, something that genuinely made me smile, was that I knew most of the lead actors by name and could names a few movies I had seen them in. Good to know I like a lot of Scottish actors and actresses. Will make life easier when I go on the 360. The acting was superb, in my opinion. But that could easily be my bias for the accent and for the amusement this film made me feel. Either way, it’s worth a watch most certainly for the way it was acted.

Shyte, now I’m thinking in a Scottish accent.

Finally and most importantly… the scenery. I DIED watching this, I kid you not. Maybe because I’m a total sucker for all things with HISTORY (read: not in freaking NZ where we HAVE NONE) but the landscape and the buildings and just EVERYTHING was beyond stunning. Seriously. I could just watch the movie for the scenery alone. But luckily it had good acting, a great plot and amazing accents to go with it. Major.

8/10 and I will definitely watch it again, it was just far too much fun the first time. I haven’t felt so uplifted in a long time, and this isn’t even my history! It’s an incredible story of ordinary people who just wanted to change the world. And in their own totally awesome way, they did. Forever.

Back to the Midnight Screening