Director Antonia Bird has triumphed where so many have failed since "The Long Good Friday", with a British crime thriller that actually works. Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting, The Full Monty) is Ray, a politically correct armed robber who's gathered together a bunch of his fellow East End "faces" to pull off an ambitious raid on a London warehouse. Amongst his partners-in-crime are the old-fashioned gangster (Winstone), the alarming but amusing psycho (Davis) and the cocky young apprentice (Albarn find out more...

A superb modern thriller in the ultra-hardboiled Jim Thompson mould, in which a trio of criminals, wanted for a brutally murderous drugs heist, converge on a small, quiet Arkansas township where the local cop, treated with contempt by the LA officers in charge of the case, looks forward to a High Noon-style showdown. The asides on racial and sexual inequality are made subtly and succinctly; the performances and pacing are nigh perfect; the violence is explicit, disturbing but never gratuitous; a find out more...