On a Clear Day

While his character — angry, uncommunicative, headstrong, middle-aged Glaswegian SOB Frank Redmond — decides to swim the English Channel after he’s been laid off as a shipbuilder, the no-nonsense Scottish actor Peter Mullan does something with an even higher degree of technical difficulty in On a Clear Day. He saves a drama tangled in the seaweed of life lessons from drowning in pathos. (Family tragedy of an Ordinary People kind has estranged Frank from his adult son.) The stark Glasgow, Dover, and Isle of Man landscapes help toughen up the mood too, as does Brenda Blethyn’s unsentimental turn as Frank’s wife.