Blood and Concrete

A black comic cocktail of '50s B film noir and post- modern irony, with a bitter twist. Small-time criminal Joey Turks (Zane) stumbles into a scam involving an addictive aphrodisiac drug, Libido, then hooks up with damaged romantic Mona (Beals). Veteran cop Hank Dick (McGavin), meanwhile, wants to settle a long-standing score with the package's real owner, criminal big-shot Spuntz, whose gay psycho hoodlum Lance (Le Gros) has become Joey's shadow. Jim Thompson might have recognised the survival ethic and scuzzy characters, but this is soft-boiled pastiche rather than hard-boiled parody.