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Thank goodness this British film is less about gangsters than about moving away from, or being ensnared by, one's background, or it sure as hell would have been a complete dud. In fact, it's only when a few thinly-scripted villains enter the frame that the focus and power of the film fall away.
Based entirely on truth (according to director Simon Marshall), this is first-time writer-director Marshall's tribute to his friend Paul Nixon (played by Sean Maguire) who, having joined middle-class media London as a going-places designer and landed a girlfriend whose uncle is a judge, is yanked back to his earthy South London background when his mother (Rita Tushingham) is beaten up by a small-time operator, an abusive moron called Ed (Phil Cornwell). Paul, revealing his roots, sees revenge as the only answer and so, helped by his best friend Steve (Danny Midwinter), enlists the services of strip-club-operator-cum-killer Lenny (Nicholas Ball). Lenny, of course, now has Paul dangling on the end of a line, and Paul's downward spiral is the end result.
Maguire, although only required to play determined and freaked out, to move from bouncy confidence to sheer terror, supplies a fairly solid centre to many scenes, the best of which are set in dark, unnerving interiors to edgy conversation. The friends' first meeting with Lenny is a good example. Marshall, incidentally, capably picks locations which capture the allure or threat of London. He is also good at tying the key characters to their proper social context, and his decision to bring in weak secondary characters, who are responsible for the film's few silly scenes (one of which includes a microwaved cat), does not ruin the good work. Men, be they insipid pub landlords or grim villains, come in for a good mauling.
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