Out of Depth

This first feature can hardly be faulted for its sincerity, since it's based on the tragic case of the writer/director's boyhood friend who was killed in a still unsolved gangland shooting. You get the sense, too, that there's a genuine personal investment in its story of a South London lad making his way in the design world, yet drawn inexorably back into the clutches of the villainry he hoped he'd left behind. A shame, then, that the result is so poorly written, cliché packed, overacted and flatly directed. For go-ahead Paul (Maguire), the trouble all starts when his barmaid mum (Tushingham) is assaulted by a local heavy (comic Phil Cornwell). He's ready for revenge himself, but his old schoolmate Steve (Midwinter), now a hustling dealer, suggests it might be wiser instead to have a quiet word with notorious hardman Pussy Cat Lenny (Ball). From which point on, we can more or less forecast the gap widening between the protagonist's trendy new West End milieu and the dodgy terrain he grew up in, with drugs and firearms speeding the decay.