It takes some balls to stand in front of a crowd and sing. It’s no wonder that some performers take on another persona when they’re on stage, almost as a layer of amour, to help get them through the ordeal.

This film follows the true story of two young Scottish lads, who didn’t just create a persona for their stage act, but created it as a necessity to get them there in the first place.

2003, Dundee Scotland, and best friends Billy (Samuel Bottomley) and Gavin (Séamus Mclean) are trying their best to break into the music industry as a rap duo. And it’s not getting off to a great start.

They see an ad in a music mag, where there’s an open audition in London for new rappers, so they decide to take the bus down south and take part.

Unfortunately it doesn’t go down well, and they feel ridiculed for being Scottish rappers.

They decide perhaps they can approach the music biz from another direction, that they can pretend to be a rap duo from California, and see how far that gets them.

It turns out it gets them further than being Scottish, as it gets their feet in the doors of a record company.

They feel all that work on their American accents pays off, as well as their background story about living on the west coast in the US. But they don’t realise that their method approach to getting into the music industry soon take its toll, taking them deeper than they could ever imagine.

James McAvoy’s first stab as a director covers a fascinating true story, based on Gavin Bain’s book California Schemin’: How Two Lads from Scotland Conned the Music Industry.

It certainly fits into the too–bizarre-to-be-true category, and yet their creation of Silibil N’ Brains is true, remarkably.

McAvoy gets some great performance out of his two leads, especially Bottomley going full method, as a English actor playing a Scottish guy pretending to be American.

After a strong start, the film does start to lose its way towards the end, with the main story beginning to drift somewhat; another prime example of a well-meaning film pushing its luck at nearly an hour and fifty minutes long, that would have probably hit all its notes more successfully in a tighter 90 minutes.

It’s a good directorial debut for McAvoy though, getting to grips with a remarkable true home-grown tale, and bringing to our attention, as he makes the unbelievable antics of this young Scottish duo believable.