Pulp

Writer/director Hodges took his abrasive, mordant style from the Newcastle of Get Carter to the Mediterranean for this, his second feature. Caine plays a pithy author of pulp fiction hired to ghost some secret memoirs. So inevitably he becomes an amateur sleuth, a wisecracking sore thumb in the impenetrable murk of fringe mafioso. There's a touch of hommage here, a dash of indulgence there, but Pulp deserved a kinder critical reception than it received, if only for Rooney's exuberant send-up of himself. One of those movies that's a laugh a line after a pint or three.