A tough British drama about an ex-miner, jailed during the great mine strike and now out of work, who accepts the offer of a bare-knuckle fight from a shady businessman. This, incidentally, seems rather an odd reason for his wife to leave him. It takes an awful long time for the fight to come about and this, despite the surface brutality, is, like the rest of the film's fistfights, not exactly convincing, the punches visibly missing. However, the make-up of beaten boxers is agonisingly, excruciatingly good, and there are dogged, personable performances from Liam Neeson, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Ian Bannen and Billy Connolly. The doom-laden atmosphere, too, is quite well achieved by director David Leland. If only he'd made the whole thing shorter: this story doesn't have the plot development to carry it easily past two hours.

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