The foggy air of Get Carter - Hodges' seminal Tyneside-set gangster thriller - hangs over this revenge drama made some thirty-odd years later.

The main thrust of the 1971 film - a brother arriving in a city foreign to him to get to the bottom of his feckless sibling's death - remains the same.

Where Jack Carter (Michael Caine) was the London hood heading north, Will Graham (Owen) is the gangster-gone-native who returns from the Welsh hills to the capital.

He was happily - well as happily as Owen can get - chopping logs in the back of beyond when a sixth sense told him something was wrong.

Something was indeed wrong. His petty dealer brother, Davey (Rhys Meyers), had topped himself in the bath after being raped by McDowell's mysterious businessman.

The bush telegraph is soon humming with news of Will's arrival back in the Smoke... and ex-rival Ken Stott is less than happy with his old adversary back on the scene.

With the help of Davey's geezerish mate Jamie Forman, Will is soon piecing together the sordid facts surrounding his brother's fate.

While maintaining the sinister edge of Get Carter, this is an altogether feebler offering with plot strands left undeveloped and, it has to be said, some pretty ropey acting.

Meyers is a pretty unlikeable victim, while Owen's economy with words suggests less that he's deep and meaningful and more like he's got nothing to say.

Charlotte Rampling has a role that seems to require she stares out of windows a lot while the motivation for McDowell's attack is resolutely unconvincing.

You'll certainly sleep after you've seen this.

Tim Evans