(1995) "Honor is a man's gift to himself," Robert Roy MacGregor (Liam Neeson) tells his young sons, Ranald and Duncan, for it can't be given to a man nor taken away from him. Director Michael Caton-Jones's historical drama (with poetic language from Alan Sharp's screenplay) of the 18th-century Scottish folk hero is an old-fashioned film with an R rating for violence, pitting a courageous man of his word against a creature of malformed nature.

Penniless without mount, knowing no one, foppish English gentleman (though admitting to being "a bastard abroad") Archibald Cunningham (Tim Roth), banished by his mother to reside within the household of James Graham (John Hurt), the Marquis of Montrose, demonstrates his superb skill with a sword for his patron's wager, easily defeating the Duke (Andrew Keir) of Argyll's man Will Guthrie.

On 300 acres in Craigrostan, responsible for 200 Highlander Scotsmen, many of them poor and starving, Rob Roy, protector of the Marquis's cattle, decides he can earn a profit for his kin and clan from his ability as a drover if he were to purchase and sell cattle on his own, borrowing £1,000 from the Marquis for the initial transaction, using his property as collateral.

Knowing the terms for the loan, the Marquis's servant Killearn (Brian Cox) conspires with Cunningham to rob Alan MacDonald (Eric Stoltz), Rob Roy's trusted courier, of the coin (substituted for a note as had been the original agreement). When Alan fails to return with his riderless horse, some of the Scotsmen suspect he'd stolen the money and headed off for America, but not Rob Roy.

The lusty Mary MacGregor (Jessica Lange) remonstrates with her husband that the Marquis won't care either way as to how the money's been lost, for he'll expect repayment with the one-fifth interest within three months as contracted. Dismissing Rob Roy's request for a second loan with a promise of all profit in forfeit, the Marquis demands instead in remission of debt the Scotsman's declaration against the Duke of being a Jacobite, or else his imprisonment in the tolbooth.

Unwilling to "lie against conscience," Rob Roy flees from Montrose, heading for the hills until tempers cool, leaving behind Mary and the boys in the belief no harm will come to them since the quarrel is with him alone. The Marquis gives Cunningham charge to bring back the outlaw "broken but not dead," leaving the means to his henchman.

As an affront to the proud Scotsman's honor, Cunningham rapes Mary in her home while his men slaughter the stock and burn the buildings. From Robert's younger brother Alasdair (Brian McCardie), Mary obtains by the emotional force of her despair ("What cannot be helped must be endured") a promise not to reveal what has happened to her: "He will not know…. That's what they want."

While engaging in rogue raids upon the rents of Montrose, Rob Roy runs Guthrie through and takes Killearn captive with the intention of forcing a confession to his having taken part in the theft and murder. Once Killearn's confronted with the testimony of a servant girl Betty, spurned by Archie with his bastard in her belly (though for whatever reason she says she still loves him) and dismissed from the household for her condition, who'd overheard the plotting, Rob Roy expects to have a legal case; but the tables are unexpectedly turned again.

While the swordplay is impressive, much of the action is predictable, with occasional thrusts of surprise, and only loosely based on the historical record, the dialogue is replete with astonishingly mellifluous phrases, such as Mary's remark that "truth is but a lie undiscovered" and Montrose's comment to the Duke about England's only Italian-born queen, Mary Beatrice of Modena, wife and consort of King James II: "I've seen healthier graveyards than that woman's womb."

In actuality, the queen, a Catholic as was her husband, who died a few months short of being 60 in 1718, the same year as the events of this story, despite suffering numerous miscarriages, had given birth to six healthy children of which only two survived into adulthood. However, in 1718 George I was in the fourth year of his reign as king of England (James II have died in 1701 and succeeded by King William III and Queen Mary II), whose wife Sophia Dorothea of Celle gave birth in 1683 to George Augustus, who became King George II in 1727. All of this has more to do with the conflict between Catholics and Protestants following the Settlement Act of 1701.

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Copyright © 2011 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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