This lo-fi Brit debut follows Hyena and Snow in Paradise in attempting to convert its budgetary limitations into a grimily serious aesthetic. But it’s as listless as its protagonist – a junkie safe-cracker (Joe Cole) given 24 hours, without smack, to secure a payload for crime boss Peter Bowles. Fine actors (Alison Steadman, Phil Davis) nudge our boy forward, yet the rehabilitation and race-against-time narratives prove fundamentally at odds: we’re left watching two films cancelling each other out. Its one oddly resonant image – the shivering addict, alone in a basement with the unyielding safe – is forgotten amid standard geezers-with-guns histrionics.
