This is Dublin, imitating Hollywood circa 1948. No bad thing, either, even on a budget as low as this: as a thriller it's ultra-simplistic, but faster-paced than many, with hardly a dull moment. Padraig O'Loingsigh and Cait O'Riordan are personable, talented young leads, while Gabriel Byrne provides what Hollywood would call the marquee attraction as a sadistic drugs dealer who enforces loyalty with violence, rewards treachery with death and seems to spread his evil shadow over half the city. When the hero's girl's brother becomes his latest victim, the scene is set for a naive but seemingly effective vendetta which has the heroine justifiably asking her lover if he thinks he's Clint Eastwood. Frank Deasy and Joe Lee certainly know how to direct a film, and their story is full of terse and suspenseful sequences, with Ian Bannen contributing a grumpy, rattrap-mouthed policeman only half a jump behind the villains. One of these is Patrick Bergin, later a star of the adventure film Mountains of the Moon. The music is by Elvis Costello, credited here as Declan MacManus.

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