Outlaw

Director Nick Love's previous outing, The Business, flopped at the box office but sold 250,000 copies on DVD. Not staggering, but enough to encourage Love to churn out yet more witless and sickeningly violent Cockerney claptrap. A revenge drama, Outlaw centres on the recently de-mobbed Bryant (Bean) who, on his return from Iraq, is unable to stomach the moral decay of ASBO Britain. Confused and angry, he forms a rag-tag vigilante group which includes a widowed lawyer (the hopelessly miscast James), a bullied telesales worker (Dire, sorry, Dyer) and a psychotic hotel night watchman (Harris). They decide that a smalltime mob boss is responsible for society's ills and plot to take him down - leading to a predictably violent denouement which is as incomprehensible as the characters' motivations. To his usual cinematic misdemeanors of dreadful plotting and clichéd characterisation, Love has added nauseating camera technique and an indecipherable political message. Devoid of any redeeming features, Outlaw should bypass theatrical and DVD release on its way to the local landfill. [Parker Langley]