In the drizzly, deadpan world of Glasgow, a painfully awkward barber's life takes a sharp turn toward the macabre in this darkly comic thriller. Robert Carlyle stars as the titular Barney Thomson, a man whose social ineptitude is only matched by his mediocre talent with the scissors. After a disastrous confrontation at work, Barney's life spirals into chaos when he becomes entangled in a gruesome accident, forcing him into a desperate cover-up. His situation grows exponentially more complicated with the arrival of two relentless police detectives, played by Ray Winstone and Martin Compston, who are hot on the trail of a serial killer targeting the city's men. As the net tightens, Barney finds an unlikely and horrifying confidante in his outrageously foul-mouthed mother, Cemolina, brought to life with scene-stealing gusto by Emma Thompson. Directed by Robert Carlyle, the film masterfully blends grim Glaswegian humor with genuine tension, following Barney's increasingly frantic attempts to extricate himself from a nightmare of his own making, where every lie breeds another and the line between victim and villain becomes dangerously blurred.