[5][6] The film begins in the early 18th century with Rob Roy leading his McGregor clansmen against King George I's forces commanded by the Scottish Duke of Argyll.

While determined to establish order in the Highlands, Argyll is sympathetic to "the bonny blue bonnets" whom he is fighting, even refusing to unleash German mercenaries against them.

A final charge by royal dragoons scatters the clansmen but honour appears satisfied and Rob Roy returns to his village to wed his beloved Helen.

The wedding celebrations are interrupted by fencibles – the private army of the Duke of Montrose who has been appointed as the King's Secretary of State for Scotland and who lacks Argyll's regard for the highlanders.

Rob Roy escapes, leaping a waterfall and subsequently leads McGregor opposition to the increasingly repressive regime imposed by Montrose through his agent Killearn.

In 1938, Gainsborough Pictures announced plans to make a Rob Roy film starring Will Fyffe, Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave directed by Carol Reed.

He followed it up with two more costume adventure tales, The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men and The Sword and the Rose, both directed by Ken Annakin and starring Richard Todd.

I can release these films over and over again and they won't get the kind of laugh you get from modern subjects made ten years back".

[19][20] Richard Todd related in his autobiography that the extras were soldiers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders who had just returned from the Korean War.

[29] The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther described it as "a fine lot of fighting among the hills, shooting of rifles, banging of claymores, skirling of pipes and buzzing of burrs, filmed and recorded in color on the actual Scottish countryside.