In 2008, the sombre and rewarding drama Better Things announced its director Duane Hopkins as a British social-realist director of serious talent. Bypass is his first feature since then and it is a comparable work, possessed of the same urgent need to give weight to marginalised and dispossessed lives. Hopkins gives us flashes of the same poetry, the same attention to mood and moment, coupled with an occasional flair for drama: there’s an unexpectedly tense car chase along the bypass which gives the movie its title – perhaps referring to stranded souls who are indeed being passed by. Yet Bypass seems to suffer from undigested ideas and, perhaps, unabsorbed research. George MacKay, starring as Tim, is almost unrecognisable from his other, happier roles. Here, he is gaunt and careworn, like a very subdued Bez from the Happy Mondays. When his mum dies and his elder brother is sent to prison for burglary and assaulting a police officer, Tim has to look after his younger sister, effectively becoming caregiver and breadwinner. But he is always liable to be drawn into crime out of pure necessity; he is also stricken with health problems, and his relationship with his girlfriend becomes another problem. It really is an incredible Calvary for Tim, although at the end there seem to be no actual, visible consequences of crime or ill-health. And there is something frustrating about this. Yet Bypass is still a welcome corrective to Benefits Street-type cynicism.
