Give Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland this: He's at least found a novel way to instantly convey a character's status as a workaholic, a method that might even outdo the time-tested talking-on-a-cell-phone-while-running-on-a-treadmill routine. Moments into Aberdeen, a young London lawyer (Lena Headey) politely asks her mother (Charlotte Rampling) to hold for a moment during their morning conversation, at which point she pops into the shower for a few seconds, wraps a towel around her waist, and picks up the conversation where it left off. This dramatic shorthand and psychological corner-cutting pervades the film, which quickly reveals an alcoholic Norwegian father (Stellan Skarsgård) to explain Headey's ceaseless drive and her tendency to roll from one one-night stand to another. Possibly the saddest drunk since Dean Martin in Rio Bravo, Skarsgård indulges in none of the clichés of the romantic alcoholic. Never witty, and prone to illness at the least opportune moments, his character is simply pathetic. His performance, and those of the actors around him, distinguish an otherwise-familiar road-trip-as-family-therapy film of the Rain Man variety, with projectile vomiting filling in for compulsive tics. After learning that Rampling is dying of cancer, Headey must retrieve Skarsgård from Norway to the film's titular Scottish city, a task made no easier by the years of resentment and alienation that divide them. Along the way, they pick up a kindly truck driver (Ian Hart), the unwanted attention of small-town gangsters, and, inevitably, an enhanced appreciation for one another. Though Moland (Zero Kelvin) has a fine eye for framing a shot, his film remains inert when not following a predictable course toward redemption, even though the cast, from the top down, nearly compensates for the story's familiarity. At one point, Hart returns some money to Skarsgård, instructing him to buy flowers. Skarsgård's expression, as he seems to recognize for the first time that cash could be spent on items other than booze, sums up decades of lost weekends better than the dialogue ever could.