When Davie (Conor Berie) breaks his leg playing football he rethinks his chances of being a professional footballer and decides to become a music promoter. With his friends Scot (Sean Connor) and John (Grant Robert Keelan) providing support he enters the murky underworld of Dundee to finance his dreams. 

Schemers is based on the real life story of Dave McLean. A man who rose from humble beginnings in Dundee to being a music promoter and manager of Placebo, a band who have sold millions of records. The issue though is that he is also the films Co-Producer, Writer and Director telling us a story about how great he was as an entrepreneur. When the character portrayed on screen is a selfish man prepared to put his friends and families lives in danger by financing those dreams through local gangsters. 

The film starts well as long as you can forgive how liberally it has ‘borrowed’ from Trainspotting. We see our main character run from someone chasing him as it freeze frames and a voiceover begins. But frankly after that any interest I had rapidly dropped to the point that half way through a 91 minute film I was desperate for some forward momentum to appear in the plot. 

The most unforgiving aspect is that for someone who lived the life of putting on live gigs of exciting new bands McLean fails to capture any sort of excitement in the film for such achievements. 

Even my desperation to see more new content in cinemas would not let me recommend this.