The 5 Best lines in Restless Natives

Restless Natives is a 1985 film set in Edinburgh about two friends, Ronnie and Will, who dressed as the Clown and the Wolfman hold up tourist coaches in the friendliest way possible. In the process, they become local heroes and inadvertent tourist attractions themselves. The main conflict in the film comes from Ronnie wanting to become a more serious criminal, while Will is a romantic hero, far more concerned with doing the right thing than becoming rich. At the end of the day, the film is an exploration of their friendship as they struggle to find meaning and direction in Thatcher’s mid-eighties Britain.

Restless Natives is a low budget, reasonably forgettable, light-hearted film and one of my absolute favourites. The characters are endearing and believable, the cinematography is beautiful, the score is uplifting and more or less everything about it is enjoyable.

“I hold up buses”

After a thorough briefing from Ronnie on not even speaking to the girl from the bus they just held up, let alone revealing anything, Will goes and finds Margot at the bus station. His floundering attempts to strike up a conversation with the woman he is so recently enamoured of are as cringe-worthy now as his delivery of the dried flowers he picked by the side of the road were romantic. In a final, desperate attempt not to let Margot slide through his fingers, Will shouts his confession across the bus station. He might be shouting “I hold up buses”, but his heart is already gone and the declaration he’s really making is obviously and sincerely another one.

It’s almost an afterthought when Will adds a few minutes later, “you won’t tell anyone, will you?” By confessing and opening himself up Will endears himself not only to Margot but to us as well. It’s our vulnerabilities that make us who we are and make us loveable, and Will goes further than simply telling Margot, he tells the whole bus station while inadvertently proving that most people will ignore anything that isn’t directly related to them.

“I have here the seventeenth most wanted man in Scotland”

The beautiful randomness of this line delivered so straight by one of Britain’s best comedians is amazing. Mel Smith only had a small part as a kingpin of the Scottish underworld, and the idea that someone kept track of Scotland’s criminal elements all the way to the number seventeen always made me laugh.

“You’re so stupid, do you not know that I…”

Will’s absolute devotion and loyalty to his friend Ronnie means he is willing to follow him on his career path to criminality no matter what. Unlike Ronnie and Will, Margot is able to see the unpleasant end awaiting the pair and is desperate to warn him. And whilst doing this she can no longer hide her true feelings for Will. She doesn’t need to explicitly say I love you, and at that moment Will doesn’t even understand what she is trying to say to him.

It takes Will a little longer to realise but when he does, he holds onto her words just as tightly as though she had declared her love for him in the form of a spontaneously composed Shakespearean sonnet. As we see in the next scene, when Will relates Margot’s declaration to Ronnie exactly as she said it to him, “she said, ‘do you not know that I…’”. It’s yet another beautiful example of Will’s naivety right before it is brought into conflict with Ronnie’s newly acquired bravado and desire to prove himself as an uncaring hardened criminal.

“Jelly sandwiches”

There it is. My favourite line in the whole film. The entire conflict of the film rests on this interaction and is resolved in this scene.

Led by a thug named Nigel, Ronnie has been steadily moving to the more criminal side of things and a desire to indulge in violence. Will, on the other hand, has always wanted to do good, and the fact that he succumbs to the blackmail of a bunch of school children places him in direct opposition to Ronnie’s descent into true criminality.

In the film’s most touching scene, Ronnie tries to cut his ties with Will and head off down the dark path. At this point, Will reminds him that they are linked and that getting rid of him won’t be that easy. He does this by reminding Ronnie of the simple act of adolescent support he offered when they were younger. “Jelly sandwiches”, he shouts almost hysterically stumbling at the importance of his emotional revelation. For years, Will pasted up a sandwich and smuggled it out of his house for Ronnie to eat, keeping his friend alive as he puts it.

Making a sandwich for a friend is such a trivial act, but to do so at that age, every day without ever letting your parents know, was something just as dangerous as holding up buses.

Every note played by Big Country

OK, it’s not a spoken line, it’s a phenomenal score played throughout. I don’t know anything else Big Country has ever done outside this soundtrack, but I love each and every note they recorded for this film. This is probably helped by the way they edited together guitar riffs with motorbike kick-starts and incredible views of the Scottish highlands.

Restless Natives moves me as much today (probably more so) as when I first watched it as a kid. If you haven’t seen it already, you can find Restless Natives on Amazon.