Murder and mayhem

If John Cassavetes is the godfather of American independent cinema, Tom DiCillo is surely one of his favourite sons. This is the man, after all, who discovered Brad Pitt when he cast him ( complete with gravity-defying pompadour) in Johnny Suede. This is also the man who made the ultimate independent movie about independent movie-making - Living In Oblivion.

His latest (actually two years old) is a characteristically anarchic take on the traditional New York detective film, in which an ostensibly cool hero, Ray Pluto (Denis Leary), fails to prevent a massacre in a diner when his back gives out.

Worse still, the gunman is brought down by a young boy who becomes a media hero. Harried at work to improve his arrest rate and haunted by the memory of his wife and child who died in a traffic accident, Detective Pluto is like a character auditioning for the role of Loser in the drama of Life.

He misses things by moments, and makes wrong decisions all the time. Distracted by a flirtation with his chiropractor (Elizabeth Hurley), he fails to notice a murder attempt on the superintendent of his apartment building; later, he foolishly agrees to assist two scriptwriter hopefuls who want to tie him to a chair in the interests of their research. Disaster beckons.

DiCillo's benign cop comedy polarises the tropes of the genre and still delivers enough meat and murder to satisfy those who lust after more traditional fare. In addition, he delivers a lightly amusing critique of genre scriptwriting through the medium of the two red-suited wannabe writers (one black, one white) who contribute to the film's denouement

Much of the fun is to be had in the margins, with the banter between Pluto and his partner (Steve Buscemi), who is becoming anxious that he may be a homosexual. The rough and grainy texture of the film stock adds to the pervading atmosphere of low-level lives struggling to maintain some kind of coherence in a muddied, messed-up world.

Buscemi is his usual reliable self and Hurley is very funny as the breezy but vulnerable English Sloane transplanted to New York. But it is Leary who dominates with his masterly study of understatement: with patented barracuda smile and air of forlorn regret ( encapsulated by his late-night viewings of cheerleader videos while smoking cannabis), he delivers an absolutely convincing portrait of a man who has almost given up - almost, but not quite.

Double Whammy
Cert: cert15