FLICK

Directed by Fintan Connolly. Starring David Murray, Isabelle Menke, David Wilmot, Mannix Flynn, Alan Devlin

A home-grown, low-budget offering about a Dublin-based dope-dealer and his struggles against the forces of law and order, Flick is by no means as bad as the recent glut of gangster Britflicks - but for a movie with such a promising and praiseworthy agenda, it suffers from a curious lack of heart and charm.

As a pure thriller, Flick's not too bad at all, with a fairly high incidence of jump-out-of-skin moments, a suitably evil host of bloodlusty villains and a reasonable mastery of the dealer lingo: its main flaw is the absence of a single remotely sympathetic character, while the drabness of the film's Dublin setting is as off-putting as it's appropriate.

Small-time dealer and whiney-faced wanker Jack (Murray) ventures out to the airport to pick up his junkie mate Des (Wilmot) who has thoughtfully brought ten kilos of hash back from Spain with him, which the pair intend to flog on their meteoric rise up the big-business ladder. Jack soon picks up an obnoxious, arty German slut in some club, heads back to her place for a good fucking, lets his girlfriend walk out on him, watches Des lose the plot progressively - and sulks, non-stop. A few double-crossings, kidnappings and broken limbs later, we've realised just how murky the whole underworld really is...

For all its dramatic efficiency, Flick can't overcome the handicap that its central characters are truly rotten company. Though it's presumably a buddy-movie of sorts, Jack and Des betray all the signs of despising one another's very guts: they bicker endlessly and nastily to audience-alienating effect, and Jack - the presumed hero of the piece - is a thoroughly miserable and dislikeable presence who fails to smile once in the course of the movie's 85 minutes. The net result, for the viewer, is a total emotional detachment and an indifference to the protagonists' fate - which is quite a shame, because the finale contains more than a few moments to raise the blood-pressure, and old stagers Alan Devlin and Mannix Flynn are visibly enjoying their roles as (respectively) crime-lord and tough-cop.

Though not without its merits, Flick misses the opportunity to illuminate the heroic importance of the dope-dealer to the greater sum of human happiness, and is more likely to serve as a warning against the lifestyle than an endorsement. Otherwise, it's a fine accomplishment within its considerable budgetary restrictions.