Small Faces – 1996 | 100 mins | Drama | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Critically acclaimed but sadly often overlooked coming-of-age drama set against the grim backdrop of late 1960s Glasgow. Director Gillies MacKinnon’s film, co-written with his producer brother Billy, is largely autobiographical mixture of great warmth and menace.

In the inner city ganglands of 1960’s Govanhill, a working-class Glasgow housing estate, urban decay is rife, territory is all, and woe betide those who break the boundaries. On one side, the Glens, led by the suavely sinister Charlie Sloan (Garry Sweeney) and on the other, the Tongs, headed by "mental" Malky (Kevin McKidd). In between are three fatherless teenage brothers living with their mother; aspiring art student Alan (Joseph McFadden), simple-minded Bobby who hangs out with a gang (Steven Duffy), and Lex Maclean (Iain Robertson).

When the youngest, thirteen-year-old Lex, "inadvertently" shoots Malky in the face with an air-pistol, and Alan becomes romantically involved with Sloan’s ex-girlfriend, the brothers become irreversibly embroiled in a gang war beyond their control. Tragedy comes to the MacLean family when Bobby is murdered in a vicious reprisal unintentionally caused to some extent by his naïve bother getting ideas above his station.