It seems that Robbie is still really afraid of prison. Robbie's life turns to a different path by visiting the whiskey distillery, where he is inspired to find a way out of that life he is living and perhaps he will meet the best types of barley whiskey in the world.
With this shaggy-dog tale of four petty Glaswegian criminals and their improbably successful scheme to steal the world's most valuable whiskey, Loach turns naïveté into a sort of moral philosophy.
Probably the first Ken Loach film you could call 'jaunty.'
Washington Post
January 01, 2014
Despite its ultimate sense of optimism, the Glasgow-set dramedy nevertheless carries a sense of foreboding. And yet, that might not have been the intention.
Mingling the peaty scent of Scottish street life with a distilled take on unemployed, at-risk youth, director Ken Loach serves up a surprisingly upbeat cocktail thanks to a subplot involving rare whisky.
Slipping back and forth between drama and comedy, The Angels' Share initially seems shaggy and unstructured, but that's part of its appeal.
Toronto Star
May 16, 2013
Loach takes us through the mysteries of whisky making, exploring the subtle tastes and scents in ways that will have audiences wishing they had a dram at hand. But a glass also serves more symbolic purposes ...
If you want to look for it, you'll find a layer of metaphor (the distilling process as a symbol of the characters' evolution) and social-realist commentary amid the gentle, life-affirming laughs.
