Robert Carlyle makes his directorial debut and stars in The Legend Of Barney Thomson, the World Premiere took place at the opening of last night’s Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Carlyle plays Barney Thomson, an ageing barber who has not done much with his life and knows it. However, when a heated discussion with a colleague ends in death, Barney’s slow paced life is about to get a shot of adrenaline.

Over the years Robert Carlyle has featured in plenty of crime capers, so it makes perfect sense that for his directorial debut he is sticking within a genre he is comfortable with. Carlyle has assembled a fine cast that includes Emma Thompson, Ray Winstone,

Tom Courtenay, Ashley Jensen and Martin Compston. Emma Thompson looks almost unrecognisable and on particularly sporting form as Barney Thomson’s mother.

The Legend of Barney Thomson arrives in the UK on July 24.

THE LEGEND OF BARNEY THOMSON tells the tale of Barney (Carlyle), a hapless barber, devoid of charm and ‘patter’ as his fellow barbering brethren mockingly remind him. Barney’s mediocre, mundane life of plotting for a way up is about to be transformed, following a typically incompetent fit of pique, when he inadvertently stumbles into serial murder, and with it headlong into the trail of a grotesque series of killings gripping Glasgow. As he makes ham-fisted attempts to cover his tracks, he finds himself on the run from the bearish Detective Inspector Holdall (Winstone) and a testosterone-driven local Police task force at each others throats over the ongoing crimes. With his sanity threatening to unravel, Barney fatefully turns to his domineering, emasculating mother, the formidable Glaswegian ‘good-time girl’, Cemolina (Thompson). There’s no turning back now and the path that lies ahead for Barney may yet be littered with more murderous consequences than he could have ever anticipated.