This is a neat little movie with a lot of energy and control - it's not overly flashy or gimmicky and doesn't indulge in excessive Tarantino-aping; the Field character is truly sleazy, but the movie keeps everything within plausible limits of degradation and loss of control, so that his pull on London is easy to understand without losing moral perspective. It's a two-hander at heart, but through various secondary characters - especially Field's Gramps, a hopeless drug addict - it manages to carve out a plausible broader social base (even if you wonder how the guys ever manage to get through any of their shifts intact). Some of the specific exposition is tedious, or overly familiar and dutiful, or just marginally amusing, but the meat of it lies simply in colourful incident, and in that regard it has real panache and sense of character.
Review of Broken Vessels
