Plunkett & Macleane (1999), directed by Jake Scott
Strange how I ended up watching that movie. After I had found out that Criterion would release McCabe & Mrs. Miller, I popped my old Warner region-2 DVD into the computer to check it out again and then decided to (re-)watch other Altman films as well, among them Cookie’s Fortune, which reminded me how much I liked Liv Tyler when I first saw the movie sixteen, seventeen years ago. The obvious conclusion was to watch Altman’s Dr. T & the Women, followed by Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty (1996), Harald Zwart’s One Night at McCool’s (2001) and, finally, Plunkett & Macleane.
Directed by Ridley Scott’s son Jake, Plunkett & Macleane is set in England in the first half of the eighteenth century and tells the story of two highwaymen, the title characters. Nobleman Macleane (Jonny Lee Miller) and not-so-noble man Plunkett (Robert Carlyle) rob the rich and rather not give to the poor. Everything goes well for them until Macleane falls in love with Lady Rebecca Gibson, played, of all people, by Miss Tyler from the colonies. Duly ensnared, Macleane soon takes a ride to Tyburn to dance the local jig.
The film’s story is simplistic to the point of most likely insulting even fervent amateurs of penny dreadfuls, full of flat, cliché-ridden characterizations. Plunkett & Macleane tries hard to be visually stylish and extravagant, in fact it’s garish, banal and pointless. The horrible pseudo–ambient pop soundtrack doesn’t help either. In comparison, Tony Richardson’s bawdy period films Tom Jones (1963) and Joseph Andrews (1977), based on Henry Fielding’s respective novels, emerge like beacons of sophistication and ingenuity. Wikipedia tells me that Plunkett & Macleane “has gained a very strong cult following.” I wonder what that cult’s object of worship might exactly be.