This slow-burn crime film-cum-musical has two misfit minor hoodlums, Mikey (Johnny Flynn) and Troy (Will Poulter), arrive at a remote cafe where a deal with gangsters is to go down. While we wait for the double-cross signalled early on, sweet but impulsive thug Troy and coy waitress Gloria (Naomi Ackie) nurture a quick romance against a background of Mikey’s muttered barracking.
Fraught with anxiety about whether or not each character is clever enough to talk, the film’s excruciating banter (courtesy of writer-director Malachi Smyth) helps the time drag, as do cameos from the cafe’s mostly eccentric clientele. Electro-folk song interludes (written by Flynn) offer images about rivers and such that might better suit another film – one that doesn’t feel as if it’s waiting for darkness so that it can finally become a noir.
