Ken Loach's 1993 film Raining Stones is his second feature film collaboration with writer Jim Allen, with whom he occasionally worked at the BBC, most notably on "The Big Flame" for The Wednesday Play and Days of Hope. Whilst their first film together (Hidden Agenda) was a political thriller, Raining Stones has more in common with their television work, in the sense that it is another "it's grim up north" tale about the working classes forced into desperate acts by poverty.
Set during a depression in an unspecified northern town (it was filmed on location in the Langley Estate near Manchester), it stars Bruce Jones as Bob, a man with no money who wants to buy a First Communion dress for his daughter. Much of the film concerns Bob's erstwhile attempts to earn money, both legally and illegally, from the blackly comic opening scenes see Bob and Tommy stealing a sheep in the hopes of selling the meat. Indeed, surprisingly for an Allen script, there's quite a lot of humour, for example when Bob is in the drain when Father Barry flushes the toilet. The film gets progressively darker as the story unfolds, with Bob briefly working on security in a seedy nightclub but running afoul of his boss when he catches Tommy's daughter buying drugs from a dealer and unsuccessfully intervenes. It gets even darker when Bob's debt is sold to loan shark Tansey, who turns up at Bob's house and intimidates his wife - Anne - and young daughter, a scene made memorably tense by Julie Brown's convincingly scared performance as Anne and Jonathan James terrifying turn as Tansey. This culminates in a confrontation between Bob and Tansey that sees the latter dead, to the relief of much of the community he terrorised, but leaving Bob haunted by the fact that he has taken a man's life, albeit unintentionally.
The problem with the film however, is that its protagonist is an idiot. Jones, best known for his role as Les Battersby in long-running British soap-opera Coronation Street, gives a very likeable and naturalistic performance as Bob, but when his wife and even local priest Father Barry point out to Bob that putting himself in debt to buy a dress for Colleen's First Communion is unnecessary, it makes the lengths he goes to buy one look even more stupid than it does already. As in all of Allen's work (and most of Loach's), there's an unspoken acceptance of his view that if his characters weren't unfairly buried at society's lowest stratum, then they wouldn't have to resort to petty crime, and because they are it can be excused. But if the audience buys into the argument, their sympathy risks being undermined when those characters then make monumentally stupid decisions.
It just about works, partly because Jones gives such a good performance, and partly because Bob's big-hearted earnestness means that it's hard to become completely exasperated by him. And as usual, Loach assembles an impressive cast of often unknown actors; Jones aside, the most recognisable are Ricky Tomlinson, who appeared in Loach's Riff-Raff two years earlier, as Tommy, and Tom Hickey who is excellent as Father Barry, a priest who proves to have a pragmatic approach to helping Bob deal with his sins. Loach also reunites with cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, who once again contributes to the grittily realistic docu-drama style that the director often favours. The club scene and its violent ending are notably well directed, capturing the noisy, sweaty environment via a largely dialogue-free sequence in which music drowns out what people are saying. Unfortunately also like Riff-Raff, the film has a soundtrack by Stewart Copeland, which now sounds horribly dated. For the most part however, Raining Stones is what one might call classic Loach.
Set during a depression in an unspecified northern town (it was filmed on location in the Langley Estate near Manchester), it stars Bruce Jones as Bob, a man with no money who wants to buy a First Communion dress for his daughter. Much of the film concerns Bob's erstwhile attempts to earn money, both legally and illegally, from the blackly comic opening scenes see Bob and Tommy stealing a sheep in the hopes of selling the meat. Indeed, surprisingly for an Allen script, there's quite a lot of humour, for example when Bob is in the drain when Father Barry flushes the toilet. The film gets progressively darker as the story unfolds, with Bob briefly working on security in a seedy nightclub but running afoul of his boss when he catches Tommy's daughter buying drugs from a dealer and unsuccessfully intervenes. It gets even darker when Bob's debt is sold to loan shark Tansey, who turns up at Bob's house and intimidates his wife - Anne - and young daughter, a scene made memorably tense by Julie Brown's convincingly scared performance as Anne and Jonathan James terrifying turn as Tansey. This culminates in a confrontation between Bob and Tansey that sees the latter dead, to the relief of much of the community he terrorised, but leaving Bob haunted by the fact that he has taken a man's life, albeit unintentionally.
The problem with the film however, is that its protagonist is an idiot. Jones, best known for his role as Les Battersby in long-running British soap-opera Coronation Street, gives a very likeable and naturalistic performance as Bob, but when his wife and even local priest Father Barry point out to Bob that putting himself in debt to buy a dress for Colleen's First Communion is unnecessary, it makes the lengths he goes to buy one look even more stupid than it does already. As in all of Allen's work (and most of Loach's), there's an unspoken acceptance of his view that if his characters weren't unfairly buried at society's lowest stratum, then they wouldn't have to resort to petty crime, and because they are it can be excused. But if the audience buys into the argument, their sympathy risks being undermined when those characters then make monumentally stupid decisions.
It just about works, partly because Jones gives such a good performance, and partly because Bob's big-hearted earnestness means that it's hard to become completely exasperated by him. And as usual, Loach assembles an impressive cast of often unknown actors; Jones aside, the most recognisable are Ricky Tomlinson, who appeared in Loach's Riff-Raff two years earlier, as Tommy, and Tom Hickey who is excellent as Father Barry, a priest who proves to have a pragmatic approach to helping Bob deal with his sins. Loach also reunites with cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, who once again contributes to the grittily realistic docu-drama style that the director often favours. The club scene and its violent ending are notably well directed, capturing the noisy, sweaty environment via a largely dialogue-free sequence in which music drowns out what people are saying. Unfortunately also like Riff-Raff, the film has a soundtrack by Stewart Copeland, which now sounds horribly dated. For the most part however, Raining Stones is what one might call classic Loach.