While the actors in 'Red Rose' worked with what they had, the rest of this movie, if you can call it that is pure hogwash. Creative license is one thing but this mockery miscarried justice to Scotland's son. Burns began in poverty. His lifestyle with women did not take him down. He loved women but that is not why Robert Burns existed. He saved Scotia's identity through her song and affected the world later with his thoughts on humankind. Thankfully, the movie did touch on that. Maria Riddell was much younger than Burns and they had a platonic relationship not love affair. In the end, Maria made love to a barely alive man with 'Ae Fond Kiss', the song Burns wrote for Clarinda, playing over it. By then Burns couldn't even walk. I viewed it in anticipation of something good and left in search of a pail in which to vomit. There is a screenplay written and ready to film. Once it's out, Burns true meaning will be seen.

I saw the film and thought the story brought a new image to the poet Robert Burns. It shows how he was put down by the establishment of the 1790's who were afraid of the political opinions he expressed on freedom, slavery and the rights of man in his poetry. It also explains how his demise was manipulated by the aristocracy who regarded his ideas as dangerous. His support of the French Revolution became known when he sent impounded Cannons to France from the famous shipwreck of the Rosamund during his work for the Scottish coastal tax authority. As the first film to be made about Robert Burns in 50 years, it is an excellent factual record of his life which has hitherto been lost in the round of Burns Suppers, Shortbread tins and Whisky covers. The script is cleverly woven in that it shows how he was lambasted by the Church and yet loved by his many female fans. Excellent record for Burns enthusiasts, who wont hear this story at Burns Suppers that's for sure. It is a brave attempt at correcting the myths about the man. Well Done Cutty Sark.

Robbie Burns is Scotland's national poet; he had an extraordinary life and lived in interesting times and there is, somewhere, a good film to be made of his life. Unfortunately this rambling, confused, over-long and badly directed shambles is not it. There are two main faults with this film. The first is the script which is stuffed full of import plot point delivering dialogue served up in full-on "As you very well know..." mode by characters who appear, declaim how important they are to the story, and then disappear again before you've registered their name. It's all over the place, full of secondary plot lines which go nowhere, scenes which do nothing, and dialogue which either assumes a close knowledge of the Burns' life and times, or demonstrates a clear inability by the writer to tell us about those times without delivering classroom lecture notes (when all else fails, a all-knowing Voice Over fills the holes in the narrative). The second major problem is the direction which, once you have swallowed the shallow attempts at supposedly cool and trendy modern ADHD cutting, is rank amateur. Most of the entertainment I got from this film was gained by waiting to see how long into a scene we got before the director crossed the line and pointlessly flip-flopped his characters from one side of the screen to the other and back again. Occasionally he managed to get through a scene without doing this - but only by backing his actors against a wall.Fighting all this, the actors manfully do their best with variable success. Michael E. Rodgers copes well with some awful lines and Lucy Russell does some Stirling 'cuddling a well-wrapped doll because we can't afford a real baby' acting at one point, but even they couldn't rescue some scenes - particularly the one where she confronts him about his latest infidelity's pregnancy, a scene which sank to sub daytime soap opera levels of badness.Another very long, totally wasted, 101 minutes that I will never get back.Incidentally the only other review of this film (since deleted) was written by someone who has only written one review. This is a standard shilling trick used by self-promoting no-hopers. So I would guess that whoever wrote it was, somehow, involved in the making of this film.