Headrush

Charlie (Conlon) is in a bit of a hole. A chronic dope-smoking habit means he can't hold down a job, and his girlfriend Vicky (Pyper) wants to crack on with the old nesting-and-hatching lark. When Vicky dumps him for his inability to come up with the readies for a down payment on somewhere to live, Charlie devises a plan: score some coke in Amsterdam for local nutcase gangster Uncle (Berkoff) and scam it back into Ireland. Aided but mostly abetted by his dope-addled buddy T-Bag (Kelty), Charlie soon finds himself squeezed on one side by the cops (Mark Doherty, Mick Dolan) and a host of semi-psychotic criminals on the other. The emphasis is on fun in Shimmy Marcus's movie about Dublin's criminal underclass (as you might expect from the man who directed Aidan Walsh: Master of the Universe) and there's plenty of gags to keep you giggling along as Charlie's masterplan unravels by the yard. The script won the Miramax Scriptwriting Award back in 1999 and Marcus displays a deft touch in juggling the various elements of his story - crime, romance and humour - while always driving the pace on. Unfortunately, the time required to finance the award-winning script means that there's a lot here you might have seen before, particularly in the recent British crime flicks such as Snatch or Layer Cake. Nonetheless, if it's off-beat crime capers you're after, Headrush will hit the spot.