Puffed-up, wounded masculinity abounds in director Mark O’Connor’s gritty, Dublin-set gang drama, starring frequent collaborator John Connors (who also co-wrote the film)as bumbling wannabe dealer Jason. With its vibrant, saturated colours and dizzying handheld camera, it is often exhausting, though not lacking in energy. The violence isn’t played for laughs and Connors’s performance is genuinely moving, though there’s an irresistible sprinkling of salty, vulgar humour to lighten the otherwise bleak mood, including a hilarious scene involving a green stolen strobe light and Mark McCabe’s song Maniac 2000.
