Spaghetti junction goes West

Shane Meadows has always had a distinctive voice as a film-maker. It may be a rough and raucous voice, but it has a consistent identity. Following on from TwentyFourSeven and A Room for Romeo Brass, his latest film maintains his strong sense of locale while attempting to expand the horizons of his characters.

And what characters. This faux western is peopled by a pannational mix of extraordinary vivacity. Robert Carlyle is a Glaswegian petty criminal, Rhys Ifans a dysfunctional Welsh wimp; Kathy Burke is a loudmouthed Londoner and Ricky Tomlinson a C&W-obsessed Liverpudlian. And they all live in the same street in a ghastly Nottingham suburb.

The western conceit provides a very loose structure on which to base a movie that threatens to pull itself apart in almost every scene. But the sheer vitality present on screen keeps it alive and kicking. Good performances from everyone - and a stunning one from 12-year-old Finn Atkins - make a strong argument for claiming that this is Meadows's best work to date.

When Shirley (Shirley Henderson) turns down a marriage proposal by her live-in boyfriend on the Vanessa Feltz television show, the incident is witnessed by, among others, her ex-boyfriend and father of her daughter, Jimmy (Carlyle). A ne'er-do-well who abandoned them to return to a squalid flat in Glasgow, Jimmy sees an opportunity to sneak back into their lives.

Following the preposterous robbery of a carful of clowns, Jimmy abandons his fellow criminals at the scene and drives off with the loot. His arrival in Nottingham precipitates all manner of complications among the extended families who inhabit the small suburb in the shadow of the town's "saloon" - ie, the local cinema-turned-bingo-hall.

Pursued by his three enraged fellow thieves he proceeds to upset the entire lives of his foster sister (Burke) and her estranged husband (Tomlinson), and poses a serious threat to Dek (Rhys Ifans) whose love for Shirley is not strong enough to contend with Jimmy's sexual charisma and hard-man reputation.

The only one not fooled by Jimmy's return is his own daughter, Marlene (Finn Atkins), whose relationship with her new dad, Dek, is far stronger than that of her blood father.

Meadows's love for his characters, however dysfunctional, and the sheer exuberance with which he flings scenes of domestic disaster and joy on to the screen in quick succession, at times threatens to sink the movie. But his aim is true and his appetite for humanity boundless.

The film is at its best when it is not trying to ape the mannerisms of the western - which lurks in the clippity-clop music and much of the gunslinger framing - and simply allows the characters to tell their own story. The really great jokes are designed around the notion of people trying to act cool when, in fact, they are anything but; Ifans is particularly good at this, from the halfhearted macho posturing to his insistence on wearing driving gloves whenever he takes his souped-up Ford Sierra for a spin.

But the real discovery is newcomer Finn Atkins: she can hold the screen like a pro and takes a close-up better than many actors twice her age. In her own quiet, unfussy way, she anchors the film whenever it is imperilled by its own rumbustiousness. I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more of her.