General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Among Giants

Among Giants is a 1998 British romantic drama directed by Sam Miller, written by Simon Beaufoy, and starring Pete Postlethwaite and Rachel Griffiths. It follows a gang of unemployed Sheffield men who take an illicit cash-in-hand contract to paint electricity pylons across the Yorkshire Moors, and the love triangle that forms when an Australian backpacker joins their crew.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	1998 (UK production); US theatrical release April 1999¹^•²
Director / writer	Sam Miller, in his feature directorial debut; screenplay by Simon Beaufoy³
Principal cast	Pete Postlethwaite (Ray), Rachel Griffiths (Gerry), James Thornton (Steve)¹^•⁴
Premise	A crew paints 15 miles of high-voltage pylons outside Sheffield for £80 each a day, cash in hand, before the power is switched back on⁵
Production	Produced by Stephen Garrett for Kudos, with the BBC, Arts Council of England, British Screen Productions, Capitol Films, and Yorkshire Media Production Agency⁶
Running time	About 93 minutes (listed as 95 mins by the British Council, 1h 33m by IMDb)¹^•²
Reception	64% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (22 reviews); US gross of $65,748 against an estimated £2,500,000 budget⁷^•²

Spoilers

Story

Ray, an unemployed Sheffield man whose marriage has failed, makes an off-the-books deal with an electricity company employee: his gang will paint 15 miles of pylons across the Yorkshire Moors by September, at £80 a day each, but only if the whole job is finished before the power supply is switched back on. The work carries no permits or the safety protocols such work normally requires.⁵ Ray and his friend Steve pick up Gerry, an Australian backpacker, and discover in a pub that she is also a climber. Despite the gang's opposition to a woman on the job, Ray hires her, and the two fall in love.¹

Ray proposes to Gerry, and the gang paints a pylon pink by moonlight as an engagement present. At a line-dancing club, Ray's ex-wife Lyn objects that he is spending money on a ring rather than on clothes for his children. Feeling trapped, Gerry gets drunk with Steve and bungee jumps off a pylon; she and Ray break up, she briefly turns to Steve, and after Ray rejects her apology she falls during a free climb and ends up in hospital. As summer ends the job is unfinished, the crew is exhausted, and Steve arrives on site furious with Ray over Gerry's accident while the power lines begin to "sing" with someone still on a pylon.¹

Production and background

Simon Beaufoy wrote the screenplay before The Full Monty, the 1997 comedy about unemployed Sheffield steelworkers that became an international hit, and Among Giants was his first attempt at a feature-length script. He described it as the script closest to his heart and a more serious film than The Full Monty, though it shares that film's setting among Sheffield men forced to work in the black economy.⁸ After The Full Monty succeeded, Hollywood distributors competed for the rights; 20th Century Fox won the auction and distributed the film in the United States and all English-speaking territories.⁸

Filming on the pylons. Beaufoy said he had long been fascinated by pylons, and safety questions left the production unsure until the last minute whether it could film on them. The cast and crew had to confront their own fear of heights; Pete Postlethwaite, by the end of filming, was happy to sit at the top of a pylon.⁸ According to a Los Angeles Times report, Postlethwaite urged first-time director Sam Miller to re-shoot a key opening shot at risk to his own safety after being unhappy with a version filmed on a mock pylon.⁹

The film was shot on 35mm Kodak stock, with Witold Stok as director of photography and Jana Edelbaum as producer on the British Council record; Stephen Garrett of Kudos is credited as producer elsewhere.¹^•⁶ Filming locations included Sheffield and surrounding Yorkshire, with interiors at the Vine Inn in Sharrow and the Hillsborough Social Club.⁶

Reception

Critics generally treated the film as a smaller, more serious companion to The Full Monty. Roger Ebert, the longtime film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, gave it three of four stars and wrote that the film is essentially about watching Postlethwaite and Griffiths being interesting, praising scenes such as Gerry traversing the four walls of a pub without touching the floor.¹⁰ Xan Brooks of The Independent gave it 3/5, calling Beaufoy's script a mix of kitchen-sink grit and sentiment and noting Miller's heavy use of crane shots.⁷ Other reviewers were harsher: the Washington Post's Desson Howe wrote that the film's aspiration to evoke a whirlwind romance atop the pylons never quite lifts off the ground.¹¹

The film underperformed commercially. It grossed $65,748 in the United States and Canada against an estimated £2,500,000 budget, opening in late March 1999.² A retrospective in the Sheffield Tribune called it "a resounding flop" that grossed less than half a million worldwide and has since become difficult to see; the same piece argued that marketing pitched a kitchen-sink drama as a feel-good summer romance, setting up audiences for a disappointment.⁵

Legacy

The pink pylon the crew paints as an engagement present became a real local landmark near Ashworth Road in Rochdale before being pulled down in 2003.⁶ The film is also noted for an early screen appearance by Andy Serkis, who plays crew member Bob, and for casting Postlethwaite, known for harder-edged roles in The Usual Suspects and In the Name of the Father, as a romantic lead.⁴^•⁹ A different, unrelated documentary titled Among Giants, about an environmental activist tree-sitting in a California redwood grove, was released in 2011.¹²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1990s › Drama films late 1990s › Released 1995 to 1998

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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