Red Ninja

It basically turned out to be an infomercial for Bruichladdich Distillery. A good deal of time was spent on Scotch and its history - which is what I was looking for - but an inordinate amount of time had been dedicated to the story of Jim McEwan, Bowmore, and Bruichladdich. They spend time pointing out Bruichladdich's awards, and then Jim McEwan's sales pitchy, "final tasting" at the end of the movie and discussing his retirement. Not to mention they bookend the entire thing with people saying glowing things of him. All that would be fine if they profiled other distillers as well, but they didn't. In fact, the only other company that got a few minutes of mention was Suntory, and that was only because Jim McEwan worked for them at one point since they owned Bowmore. And all of that would be fine if Jim McEwan was the single most important man in the history of Scotch, but he isn't. I'm a whisk(e)y fanatic, and was hoping for more insight into the industry and history of Scotch. However, it didn't quite deliver anything close to a deep dive, featuring mainly information easily acquired through a cursory Google search, save for the one favored distillery in the production. I would have enjoyed it far more if they had called it Bruichladdich: A Golden Dream. It was well shot and produced, and it had good pacing - I would simply have liked less information about one particular master distiller or more information about some others. Maybe talk about the distillers who revived Scotch for the rest of the world after its reputation as such a poor product forced the Americas and Ireland to change the spelling. They're a far more compelling story than the retirement of one contemporary who isn't even a household name to a non-Scotch drinker.