You can see "On a Clear Day" forever in the inspirational plots of "My Name Is Joe," "Billy Elliot," "The Full Monty," "Chariots of Fire": Scottish, Irish or English blokes, made redundant or irrelevant, suffer loss of self-esteem, set personal (typically athletic or artistic) goal, overcome adversity, conquer personal demons.

		'On a Clear Day' Rating: PG-13 for mild profanity. Starring: Peter Mullan, Brenda Blethyn. Director: Gaby Dellal. Opens today at Squirrel Hill only. Pos-Gazette Family Film Guide review of 'On a Clear Day' "On a Clear Day" Web site

Working-class grit is an obligatory ingredient, and there's Glasgow grit galore in director Gaby Dellal's current reworking of the formula. Frank (Peter Mullan) finds himself laid off from his life's work as a shipbuilder at the tender age of 55. It's a low blow, and he was low -- one might almost say clinically depressed -- even before he lost his job. Never having come to grips with the drowning death of a son years before, he is distant if not downright estranged from his surviving kids and salt-o'-the-earth wife Joan (Brenda Blethyn).

Frank, let's face it, is an emotionally stunted zombie these days. An excellent swimmer, he only seems happy -- and free -- when in water. Otherwise, he's lugubrious. But he has the world's best trio of pals (brash young Billy Boyd, timid old Ron Cook and crusty Sean McGinley), who overcome their misgivings to back up his outrageous decision to go for an ultimate endurance test: swimming the English Channel.

You've gotta have serious back-up support for that, and the fourth member of Frank's pit crew is Asian fish-and-chips vendor Benedict Wong (another of Scottish society's lame ducks). Together, they get down to the noble business of training him, and the ignoble business of keeping Frank's plan a secret from his family.

Mullan gives a fine, convincing performance as the neglectful father and husband but powerful hulk of a man, who's trying not to crush but to stonewall the world around him. Blethyn is wonderful as his loyal wife, a woman with aspirations of her own: She wants to be a bus driver and -- no thanks to her self-absorbed hubby -- is determined to pass the license test she keeps flunking. Frank's oddball team of handlers is livened by the cute Boyd (Pippin in "The Lord of the Rings"), who provides comic relief.

Filmed on lovely location in Glasgow, the Isle of Man and Dover, "On a Clear Day" is a kind of long day's journey into the channel -- a sincere if predictable tale of post-natant redemption, swimming with, as well against the tide.