George is a down at heel ex-convict who has just been let out and is hard looking for work. His wife has divorced him and keeps his daughter at a distance. She doesn’t want anything to do with him or him to have anything to do with her. When he finds a job as a driver for a high end escort Simone from a former gangland pal Denny things seem to be looking up. However nothing is as easy or as simple as this and as we find out, Simone wants to find a junkie friend called Cathy. Both were on the game and neither got out but one got up. Denny wants to find out information as leverage and wants to stop Simone in her tracks. So George is stuck at a cross road and having just spent 8 years inside for Denny, he must chose who he will help and what his motivation is.

It is hard not to be bias about the brilliance of this neo British noir film. You see it is a stand out film in the excellent films of its director and cast. All of which are at varying levels of extraordinary, giving multitudes of layers to the piece. Jordan makes a film that looks very dingy and grimy but with opulence and focal points that are unique and weirdly engaging. The cast which is led by a superb central performance by Hoskins direct attention into the very essence of the story. They divulge great details of the down trodden streets of London and the vice movement of the 80s. They play the film as a character piece and inject volumes of complexity into people that we would see as simply empty headed thugs, villains and whores.

We have to engage with the time the film was made in and thanks in part to a script that reflects tensions of class, race and gender without being naive or worse still offensive. A serious subject matter which is treated with enough respect to be kept at distance but explored enough to make us commit and a very good score (albeit with a dodgy Phil Collins number in the middle) to construct a life we live as well. You see thanks to all of this we do not only see this as a simple crime / romance piece that slips between the two genres and sculpts a sub genre. It is a film that firmly finds itself as the pinnacle of British film and highlights the great strength of the movement and time.

Now Arrow films have set about reconstructing and releasing great works of cult cinema and have hit their stride with this film. It looks amazing and sounds just as good. The feeling is there and so is the beautiful dirty landscapes so well captured by Jordan. I loved this film and love the look of its new remastered vision even more. A must watch for any film lover and even more so for noir fans.