The arthouse Scottish film ‘Young Adam’ had a high reading on the drama/thriller meter.’Young Adam’ is set in the Glasgow of the early 1950s. The film is basically a four hander. The main character is Joe, a rootless, aimless young drifter who finds work on a barge owned by the down to earth Les and his enigmatic wife Ella. One afternoon Joe and Les happen upon the corpse of a young woman floating in the water, a chilling discovery that has huge repercussions.

The film is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Scottish Beat writer Alexander Trocchi. ‘Young Adam’ has been written and directed by David MacKenzie, and takes place on the canals between Glasgow and Edinburgh during the 1950’s. The cast is an impressive one with Ewan McGregor in the main role,supported by Tilda Swinton, Peter Mullan and Emily Mortimer.

‘Young Adam’ worked, above all, because the film felt so real and authentic. I believed Adam’s story… a young drifter going from job to job, trying somewhere along the line, to stumble upon himself. He spends his time drifting between the canals of Glasgow and Edinburgh however he also has dreams of going to China. Perhaps typical of this type, much of the trouble that Adam gets himself into, revolves around his numerous entanglements with women.

I enjoyed Ewan McGregor’s portrayal in the lead role. He played him as an an ordinary kind of bloke who is dealt a horrible twist of fate and copes in the best way he can. I think it was Adam’s very ordinariness, intellectually, morally, that gave the film much of its power.